How Education Fights AIDS: By helping national health care systems to meet the needs of their populations.
See allAfrica story, “Rwanda: U.S. Donates $ 6.8 Million to Global Lab Fund.”
National health systems must be reinforced to provide sustainable HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care for its people. One way to ensure sustainability is to invest in laboratories, national health science researchers and medical personnel.
Inadequate laboratory services prevent the effective treatment of HIV and AIDS because they prevent people from knowing their status. It also hinders doctors from effectively treating AIDS patients, as they must monitor different components in a person’s body, such as red and white blood cell counts, in order to prescribe the right ARVs (Antiretrovirals).
-Rachel Hoy, MPH
Tags: ARVs, blood cell counts, care, laboratories, national health systems, prevention, status, treatment
