Mobile test revolutionises HIV care in Uganda

Mobile technology and the pioneering work of a UK doctor has helped transform a basic health centre in a remote pocket of Uganda into an efficient community hospital. People with HIV were often carried all day to get to the remote clinic on the edge of the Impenetrable Forest.
That was the situation in Bwindi, when Dr Paul Williams, formerly a GP in North-East England first arrived there three years ago."There were no testing services, no education, no treatment and certainly no monitoring of treatment,” he said. “People just died." But for the past five months, a small important piece of equipment has helped Dr Williams' team monitor patients with HIV from a clinic in the back of a four-wheel-drive, a BBC science correspondent reported.

Bwindi is a mile away from the rainforest where there are mountain gorillas, on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. There are no tarmac roads and it takes many patient a day to reach the clinic. But because of the poverty levels, it is a journey many can simply not afford to make. So Dr Williams medical team packs a portable HIV outreach clinic into its 4x4, and takes it out to remote communities. It’s key piece of equipment is a PointCare NOW machine donated to the hospital last year. This portable blood-testing device has revolutionised the care Dr Williams can offer HIV patients. Within 10 minutes, it gives a print-out detailing the condition of a patient's immune system. It counts the white blood cells that the HIV virus latches on to attacking and destroying them. With HIV, the number of these cells falls and the machine developed by US company, PointCare, lets medics count the cells to see how advanced the HIV is.

In areas like Bwindi, tonnes of donated instruments often just sit in storage. The chemicals perish in the heat. So the machine was specially developed to withstand the heat, and be portable.“Before we had this machine, we'd see somebody in the clinic, then we'd have to see them another day to collect a blood sample," recalled Dr Williams. "We had motorcycle riders to collect samples. They would ride for four hours along a muddy road through the Impenetrable Forest, to a laboratory the other side, where we could get them tested.” "It took us three days to get the result, and we couldn't get it to the patient until we saw them again two weeks later. "Now, with this simple piece of technology, we can deal with problems immediately."

Bwindi Community Hospital cares for about 40,000 people. It has a maternity programme and a children's ward that deals with a lot of malnutrition, as well as other common diseases including malaria and its 1,000 HIV positive patients.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children