January 2004 – The Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR) in collaboration with the National Action Committee on AIDS (NACA), the Federal Ministry of Health (NASCP) and with support from the AIDS Prevention Initiative in Nigeria (APIN), will by the last week of January 2004 commence a nationwide training on clinical management of HIV/AIDS.

The training programme will cover two main areas:

1. Antiretroviral Drugs and their proper use in the clinical management of HIV/AIDS
2. Laboratory Monitoring Tests for people living with the virus and their response to various clinical intervention strategies.

This training programme have become crucial and necessary for several reasons:

1. Antiretroviral Drugs

The antiretroviral drugs have been shown to be useful in the clinical management of HIV/AIDS. The use of combination of antiretroviral drugs has been associated with sustained decrease in viral load and significant improvement in immune status. These have resulted in significant survival and reduced morbidity rates in the patients and decreased rate of mother-to-child transmission.

The desired results are achieved if the ARVs are properly used. When they are not properly used, the consequences can be very grave at both national and global levels. The emergence of resistant strains of the virus can render most of the current ARVs ineffective.

The ARVs are a brand new set of drugs that have been associated with various degrees of potency and side effects. More so, there are to be used in defined combinations. It is thus important that a very good knowledge of the ARVs by relevant health providers is necessary for the ARVs to be properly administered on the patients.

The Federal Government embarked on a National ARV programme in January 2002. The programme has 25 treatment sites. Since then, several State Governments, NGOs and other stakeholders have initiated ARV programmes at various other centres. The present situation is that various brands of ARVs are being imported into the country outside the national programmes. Equally various combinations of these ARVs are being used in these various centres. These centres include both public and private health facilities.

There has not been any coordinated national training of Clinicians and other health providers on what ARVs are and their proper use in the country. This very important gap has informed the proposed training programme. Proper administration of ARVs is usually carried out by a team of health care providers; a Clinician, a Pharmacist; a Nurse, a Nutritionist, a Counselor and a Data Manager. It is therefore mandatory that for any health facility to implement the ARV programme, that facility must have a full complement of the above named cadre of health care providers.

The thrust of the proposed training programme is therefore to train a full team of personnel on the proper use of ARVs in each of the 36 states and the FCT. Each team will be drawn from identified Federal, State and Private health facilities in the states.

2. Laboratory

Some biologic markers are important in the evaluation of the response of the patients to ARV treatment. These include a wide range of tests: Haematology, Clinical Chemistry, Immunology/Serology, CD4 and Viral load tests. Any centre implementing the ARV programme should ideally have adequate human and infrastructure capacities for most of the above mentioned laboratory tests.

The proposed programme will train 2 - 3 Laboratory Scientists from each of the 36 states and FCT on various techniques used for these tests. For the sake of building effective teamwork, the Laboratory Scientists will be drawn from the same health facilities as the clinical team to be trained on ARVs.

TRAINING MODULES

A team of National and International experts was put together to develop training modules for the proposed programme. These training modules, both for the ARVs and Laboratory, are now available and will be used for the training.

TRAINING VENUES

South:
All participants drawn from the Southern States will be trained at the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research, Yaba, Lagos.

North:
All participants drawn from the Northern States will be trained at the APIN Centre, Jos University Teaching Hospital, Jos.

RESOURCE PERSONS

The Resource persons for the training programmes have been constituted from a team of National and International Experts.

COST OF TRAINING

The 37 identified health facilities will be contacted early in the 2nd of January to forward a list of their nominations for the training.

The training will be at no cost to the 37 identified centres as the AIDS Prevention Initiative in Nigeria (APIN) will support this training programme. The training is projected to be continuous at periodic intervals. However, subsequent training after the 37 identified facilities will attract some costs, which will be worked out later.

For more information, contact:

Dr. Oni Idigbe
Training Programme Coordinator & Director General
Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR)
Yaba, Lagos, Nigeria.
Tel: 234-1-7744723 Fax: 234-1-3425171
Email: oniidigbe@yahoo.com