Clinton foundations and MTN fight HIV infection in newborns in Cameroon

Clinton Foundations and MTN-Cameroon have just signed a partnership agreement to ' save 10,000 Cameroonian newborns infected with HIV/AIDS during the three years that will last their partnership ", has learned PANA, an authorized source.

"We left on the basis of the fact that, between sampling performed on a newborn, and provision of the results of screening for HIV testing his blood sample-based, it runs generally several months, allowing the disease to spread and kill more patients.'


'We are therefore launching a crusade against this late diagnosis through a system known as "SMS Printer" ", said Melvin Akam, Executive Secretary of the MTN Foundation in Cameroon.


The SMS Printer process, we learn, is a kind of mobile phone with a built-in mini-printer which will be installed by the Clinton Foundation in 682 test across Cameroon centers, including the most remote rural areas.


The mission of MTN-Cameroon Foundation is to put its network, which covers 98 per cent of the national territory, as well as its facilities at the disposal of the Clinton Foundation to make instant and possible transmission by SMS and the printing of the results of testing performed on newborns by two only specialized laboratories in the country which are the international Centre of research, Chantal Biya (ICRW) in Yaoundé and the Center for disease control and prevention (CDC) at Mutengene, in the Southwest.


Indeed, reassures Melvin Akam, SMS Printer will make available results as quickly as possible, in order to allow rapid support of newborns tested HIV positive.

"Because, he added, it happens that a child yet infected at birth is lost from view or dies without being placed under treatment, because it did not know his status, indicates MTN Foundation Cameroon, for which the SMS Printer is, from this point of view, a "true revolution."


According to MTN Foundation Cameroon, 'studies conducted in other countries such as Nigeria and Kenya show that the technology associated with the SMS significantly reduced timeouts on the results of early diagnosis and allows easy access to the results available at the time the mother returns to the health centre.


Similar performance was conducted in Malawi, Uganda and Zambia.


In 2011 in Cameroon, AIDS killed 33,000 people, including 7,300 babies infected at birth by their mother.


The Clinton Foundation of former US president Bill Clinton is one of the most active organizations in the prevention against HIV in the world, while the MTN Foundation Cameroon is the Cameroon subsidiary of the South African phone company, Mobile Telephone Network (MTN).