Taneisha Gordon

   Audio File: 05:05 Interviewer: Great! Could you tell me more about your primary responsibilities in your position? Interviewee: Mostly we coordinate the HIV activities in terms of supervision.  We do offer technical advice, we do meetings in terms of target setting when it comes to EMTCT in the Sub-County.  We also offer advice when it comes to HIV and AIDS services in the Sub County, and also majorly offering mentorship to the people offering the services.  We also do, carry audit to our facilities, those people who are offering the HIV and AIDS services, and when it comes to matters to do with the EMTCT, we also carry out those audits so that we can know how we are doing, how well we are doing,  if there are areas we need to improve, we do so.  We also normally have data review meetings to see how we are doing in, in terms of our targets, in terms of the prevalence, whether we are improving or not. Yeah. Interviewer: How long have you worked as a sub CASCSO? Interviewee: Sub CASCSO; 6 years Interviewer: 6 years? Interviewee: Yes Interviewer: Ok. Am interested in learning about how PMTCT programming has evolved in the past 2 years.  What would you say are the goals of the PMTCT programme in your sub-County? Interviewee: The goals? Interviewer: Yes the goals. Interviewee: How do I need to put it, how PMTCT has been in the sub County? Interviewer: Yeah Interviewee: Yeah, Actually for the last two years, ok, in the past we have actually been having like the prevalence PMTCT, the PMTCT prevalence has been high like for the 2015, we have had 9.2 but we have come down, right now we have 7.1, so we are seeing at least the trends are going down down down, and we are hoping that if it continue like that, then we are going to move to below 5% that is towards elimination of mother to child transmission and that's where we are aiming at.   Interviewer: I see. Interviewee: Yes Interviewer: Ok. And what are the primary activities you conduct to try to get that elimination?  Interviewee: Primary activities; Actually initially to all our mothers who come to the AMC, all the mothers who are attending first AMC, we make sure that they do the HIV tests, cause this is where we are going to identify those ones who are positive so that they are put on interventions.  Then we are also carrying out activities, as I mention earlier audit checks so that we want to know if we have this number of mothers positive, how many are put on prophylaxis or if there is any miss prophylaxis that is in terms of maternal prophylaxis or infant prophylaxis.  We want to see how we are going to bring them back so that they receive the prophylaxis.  During the year 2015, we have had that programme of bringing back mother and child.  we also fully we've fully involve ( 03:35 Inaudible) during that time so that we have to carry out, we want to do some audits like these are the mothers who are positive, these are the ones who are put on prophylaxis and those who have missed, where are they, so that we go look for them and start them on prophylaxis.  That is just majorly when it comes to the activities, and as I have already said earlier on, we have supportive supervision, whereby now as the sub-county team we go to the facilities we carry out supportive supervision to the people working on the sub-counties, we identify where if they have any gap or where they need support we offer the support, in terms of EMTCT.  And then we have activities like the early infant diagnosis whereby we encouraging all the facilities that offer PMTCT to aggressively identify these children in terms of the exposed children.  We do it as early as 6 weeks when mothers bring their babies to the clinic for immunization so we want to look at these mothers, who are these exposed babies so that if we are getting the exposed babies then we go ahead and do what - we take the DBS, we take the test, we want to see whether they are negative or positive, if we come up with one that is positive they are started on treatment, the negative ones are put on prophylaxis, infant prophylaxis