Abstract:

Interventions to Prevent Mother to Child Transmission in the world have evolved over the years. Cameroon like every other country has been conforming to new recommendations from WHO based on evidence for better quality of service. Option B+ which entails provision of lifelong Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) to each pregnant and breastfeeding woman was recommended as the standard for PMTCT in 2012⁽¹⁾. Cameroon adopted these guidelines and set out for implementation in October 2013. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of task shifting from nurses to doctors in the rapid scale up of option B+ in Cameroon. Results show that within a period of fifteen months, a total of 520 nurses from 266 PMTCT sites in the South West region were trained on the provision of ART at MCH (maternal and child health) units. They were able to adequately provide ART to 1,754 women by December 2015 (Mvogo, 2016). These results set the pace for the scale up of Option B+ to other sites and regions across the country without putting pressure on the limited number of doctors in the country.

Keywords: Task shifting, PMTCT, Option B+, ART, MCH, HIV.

References:

[1] CDC. (April 2016). CDC in Cameroon. Atlanta: Center for Global Health.

[2] Mary B Morris, Bushimbwa Tambatamba Chapula, Benjamin H Chi, Albert Mwango, Harmony F Chi, Joyce Mwanza, Handson Manda, Carolyn Bolton, Debra S Pankratz, Jeffrey SA Stringer and Stewart E Reid. (2009). Use of task-shifting to rapidly scale-up HIV treatment services: experiences from Lusaka Zambia. BMC Health Services Research.

[3] Mvogo. (2016). Rapport Annuel 2015. Yaounde.

[4] WHO. (2008). Train, treat, retain. Task Shifting: rational redistribution of tasks among health workforce teams; global recommendations and guidelines. Geneva, Switzerland: WHO Document Production Services.

[5] WHO. (2016, October 11). Country Cooperation Strategy. Retrieved from World Health Organization: http://www.who.int/countries/en