This was during its GIP ESTHER liaison meeting with the Ministry of Public Health yesterday in Yaounde.

The French-funded project in Cameroon dubbed ESTHERAID yesterday April 10 in Yaounde had its seventh liaison meeting with officials of the Ministry of Public Health, during which a new project to better access the viral load of HIV patients "OPPERA" was launched in the presence of the Minister of Public Health, André Mama Fouda and the Ambassador of France to Cameroon, Christine Robichon.

While presenting the" OPPERA" project, Catherine Dauphin of GIP ESTHER in France said it is a new technology that will permit countries with low income to have access to the viral load of patients. According to Catherine Dauphin, the aim of the project is to ensure that the price of viral load decreases and becomes accessible to many countries. It is also to demonstrate that new technologies for viral load can be implemented in laboratories in Africa. At the moment, GIP ESTHER will begin a pilot phase of the project at the Laquintinie Hospital in Douala, Littoral Region and the Centre Pasteur in Garoua, North Region. Catherine Dauphin said it is a machine that counts the number of viral replication in the blood of an HIV patient.

This project according to GIP ESTHER experts will be beneficial to people living with HIV because viral load is the best way to monitor the patients' response to treatment, to prevent resistance and a good way of avoiding going to second and third line treatment which are more expensive. After the pilot phase of the project, the second phase will be to prove that new technologies are also polyvalent because the machine will be able to access not only the viral load of HIV patients but also tuberculosis and hepatitis which are common illnesses amongst HIV patients. Catherine Dauphin noted that with time, they will expand the machine to other regions depending on the outcome from discussions with health officials in the country.

During discussions, the Minister of Public Health and the General Manager of GIP ESTHER in France, Dr Gilles Raguin took to the rostrum to laud the importance of ESTHERAID and the need for more focus to be placed on children born or living with HIV. So far, Dr Carole Mimbang Midoungue of GIP ESTHER Cameroon said projects carried out by ESTHERAID are effective but the main challenge was the lack of some anti-retroviral drug.