![]() ![]() “Abbott and BD’s decision to stop making critical point-of-care testing equipment for HIV is going to have a major negative impact on the lives of people with advanced HIV,” said Stijn Deborggraeve, Diagnostics Advisor, MSF Access Campaign. It’s therefore vital that the WHO guidelines clarify that there is still a critical role for point-of-care CD4 tests so that people living with HIV can receive the right package of care as soon as possible.”Īpproximately 8 million CD4 tests are needed annually in LMICs: Abbott’s and BD’s decisions to stop producing CD4 testing devices will significantly impact the provision of care to people with HIV in low-resource settings, including in HIV programmes run by MSF. “Point-of-care CD4 tests are a particularly crucial diagnostic tool in the communities where we work, as we can bring the tests to people to diagnose advanced HIV disease. “We rely on CD4 testing to diagnose advanced HIV disease in people living with HIV: it’s an essential and often lifesaving step toward providing each person in our care with the appropriate tools to manage their disease,” said Dr Fabien Kabongo, Medical Coordinator for MSF in Conakry, Guinea. Point-of-care CD4 devices are battery-powered equipment or disposable rapid tests that require minimal or no laboratory infrastructure, making them especially useful in decentralised and low-resource settings. CD4 tests can be carried out through large, laboratory-based devices or point-of-care devices. Up to 30% of people beginning HIV treatment are diagnosed with advanced HIV disease, which requires immediate and specific medical care as the risk of death is high. CD4 tests count the number of CD4 cells in a blood sample: a low CD4 cell count indicates advanced HIV disease. HIV infects and destroys CD4 cells, which are a type of white blood cell that plays a key role in the human immune system. ![]() In addition, we encourage the WHO to provide updated and explicit guidelines about the critical role of point-of-care CD4 testing. “The implementation of those lessons is where we need to get to.To safeguard access to lifesaving CD4 testing, MSF called on Abbott and BD to immediately reverse their decision to stop the production of CD4 equipment or transfer the technology to a manufacturer in a low- or middle-income country (LMIC) and support local production. “The lessons that need to be identified are not new ones,” says Michaud. Without big shifts in health policy infrastructure and messaging, we may be doomed to repeat the past. Millions of others who survive are suffering from long Covid, which produces a host of lingering symptoms like breathlessness and brain fog and remains frustratingly difficult to diagnose and treat. And it is still circulating. In April alone, the WHO reported, Covid-19 killed another 17,000. So far, the virus has killed nearly 7 million people worldwide (although that’s likely an undercount). ![]() Yet the end of the Covid emergency is far from a victory. ![]() It encourages countries to develop stronger data collection, use surveillance to identify variants, get high-risk groups vaccinated, and ensure that people who are diagnosed with Covid-19 have access to care. Last week, the organization released an updated plan for nations to cope with Covid-19. The WHO is hoping that some of these lessons will stick. At-home testing has always left gaps in national statistics and viral genetic sequencing efforts, says Peter Hotez, codirector of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. Should new variants begin circulating and bring Covid-19 roaring back in the fall, there will be less data available. The emergency declaration mandated that local data be provided, and that will now lapse.Īnd with less data, it will be harder to track new variants, which in turn will complicate the puzzle of updating vaccines to provide the most protection, although in some areas wastewater surveillance and genomic surveillance will continue. But when the US ends its emergency on May 11, the CDC will stop tracking community levels of transmission and instead will track overall hospitalization and death rates. That’s also true of cases and deaths in the EU. In the US, new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are all trending downward, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ![]()
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