The long awaited ‘HIV Molecular Diagnostics Toolkit to Improve Access to Viral Load Testing and Infant Diagnosis’, which presents new and tried concepts for scaling up HIV viral load testing across settings, was launched during the ASLM- and WHO-hosted session, What’s new in diagnostics: Novel HIV molecular interventions to support expansion of viral load access at the ongoing International AIDS Society Conference IAS2019.
Currently, about half of patients on antiretroviral treatment have access to viral load testing; however, access remains focused within a small number of countries. To date, routine HIV viral load monitoring, which is considered the best method for monitoring antiretroviral treatment, has been fully implemented in 68 percent of low- and middle-income countries, and partially implemented in 20 percent of low- and middle-income countries with the highest burden of HIV.
While plasma is the preferred specimen type for viral load testing, it can be restrictive in settings with limited infrastructure and cold chain availability, in addition to several challenges and barriers to widely scaling up viral load.
