Unconventional health workers and new technologies will be a vital part of the ongoing effort to "virtually eliminate" mother-to-child transmission of HIV, says Michél Sidibé, executive director of UNAIDS.
"We cannot wait for the highest cadre of health professionals to be trained before expanding our capacity to prevent mother-to-child transmission," he told a press conference in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. "We have to tap into non-conventional capacity to help expand access to health services."
Sidibé and Jeffrey Sachs, special adviser to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the Millennium Development Goals, have just concluded a visit to the Millennium Village in Sauri, western Kenya, to assess the progress of a joint effort by UNAIDS and the Millennium Villages Project to strengthen PMTCT services at the village level, creating "MTCT-free zones".
The collaboration, launched in September 2009, aims to "virtually eliminate" mother-to-child transmission in 14 Millennium Villages across 10 African countries using the existing infrastructure, human capacity and technical resources in the villages to help rapidly expand family- and community-centred heath services.
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