Yale and Ghana government to eliminate HIV transmission between mother and child
Initially aims to cut transmission rate to less than 5% by 2018
Yale University is collaborating with the government of Ghana and other high-profile organisations to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV in the country. President John Dramani Mahama has announced a global consortium that also includes IBM, The ONE Campaign to prevent poverty and disease, and several local partners in Ghana.
Ghana has one of the highest rates of HIV among pregnant women in the world. HIV testing during pregnancy is often deferred due to lack of public awareness, limited access to diagnostic tests and cultural issues.
The initial objective of the consortium is to reduce the rate of mother-to-child transmission to less than 5% by 2018, which would meet a goal set by the World Health Organisation. The Ghanaian government would like to go further, however, and ensure a reduction to less than 1% by 2020.
Through its Ghana-Yale Partnership for Global Health, Yale supports collaborative research and training initiatives focused on diseases of public health significance in sub-Saharan Africa. Under this new consortium, Yale students and faculty members will carry out HIV research, education, and training to support care providers and public health officers to protect the lives of women and their babies.
In most resource-limited countries, mother-to-child transmission of HIV continues to fuel the HIV epidemic
Doctors Elijah Paintsil and Michael Cappello, Yale paediatric faculty members and co-directors of the Ghana-Yale Partnership, played key roles in forging this alliance.
'In most resource-limited countries, mother-to-child transmission of HIV continues to fuel the HIV epidemic,' said Paintsil. 'Scientific discoveries from universities are meaningless unless they translate to the alleviation of human suffering around the globe.'
Cappello added: 'Since its founding in 2007, collaborative research conducted under the Ghana-Yale Partnership for Global Health has advanced our understanding of HIV and parasitic diseases, and its training efforts have increased capacity in biomedical research at the University of Ghana and Yale.
'We are excited to extend the collaborative network of the Ghana-Yale Partnership to include the Ghana Health Service, IBM, and The ONE Campaign, with a shared goal of making Ghana the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV.'
