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Following the International AIDS conference, UNAIDS released a report that indicates more than half of the 36.7 million people with HIV have access to treatment for the first time. Despite this encouraging statistic, both HIV and AIDS death rates are increasing in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. NPR spoke with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) HIV and TB policy adviser, Sharonann Lynch, about the most recent HIV/AIDS trends. 

Just three months after starting a new project offering treatment for advanced HIV/AIDS in support of the Hôpital Communautaire in Bangui, Central African Republic (CAR), Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is expanding its activities to respond to the high demand for treatment. Here, MSF medical referent Dr. Christine Bimansha Mbombo discusses the situation.

Since 2006, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has been providing ambulatory medical and psychosocial care for people in Mumbai living with drug-resistant tuberculosis (DRTB), HIV, hepatitis C, or a combination of these diseases. The majority of the patients are HIV positive who require second or third line treatment. Narendra* is one of only two percent of drug-resistant TB patients in need that have access to these new drugs.

In settings with a high HIV/TB burden and significant shortages of human resources for health (HRH), task shifting strategies have relied on lay workers to provide HIV testing and counselling (HTC) and adherence support for HIV and TB treatments.

While in some countries these tasks were integrated into the work of existing community cadres such as community health workers, new basic cadres have been created and trained in other countries, supported mainly through international funds.