Enhancing the Prevention of Mother-To-Child Transmission of HIV

This project also known as INSPIRE (INtegration and Scaling up Prevention of mother-to-child transmission through Implementation REsearch) aims to directly contribute to the global elimination of the mother-to-child transmission of HIV by providing sustained support in countries with a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS. Specifically the project aims to: (1) increase the uptake and effective implementation of interventions to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV; (2) promote a more integrated and comprehensive approach to the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV; (3) link district-level program effectiveness studies to the strengthening of national programs; and (4) reduce the number of infants becoming infected with HIV and improve the health of HIV-infected mothers. To achieve these objectives the program supports six research teams (two research teams in Zimbabwe two in Nigeria and two in Malawi) that focus on integrating health programming approaches and communications technologies such as text messaging for better facility-level follow-up. The project builds on CIDA's longstanding support to the World Health Organization (WHO) HIV/AIDS department and is part of the Canadian HIV Vaccine Initiative (CHVI).