Establishing Surveillance Systems for HIV-1 recent infection in Nigeria

The RTRI project is targeted at establishing a surveillance system for HIV-1 recent infection in Nigeria.

This is expected to be used for epidemiological surveillance of critical trends, geography and subpopulation; as well as guide targeted community HIV testing.

The RTRI is in the first year of implementation and guided by a study protocol.

The study is led by the Federal Ministry of Health with other stakeholders.

International and National ethical approval has been granted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Division of Global HIV & TB (DGHT) and National Health Research Ethics Committee, Nigeria (NHREC) respectively.

The RTRI project is being implemented around four objectives. They include:

·       to Support and participate in trainings for RTRI activities,

·       to Implement HIV recency testing in 49 selected sites,

·       to conduct routine site and lab quality control monitoring, and

·       to participate in national recency core team meetings.

Also, the project is currently being carried out through two (2) platforms:

ICAP TRACE project: A public health surveillance of recent HIV infection and response under the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR),

This is implemented across 11 facilities in Lagos state by CIHP under a sub- award from ICAP.

CIHP Recency Testing project: This is implemented across the two (2) states of Kaduna, and Gombe. The target for recency testing under this platform is 10% of all identified HIIV positive.