Clinical and Epidemiological Analysis for HIV-exposed Infants in a Low Resource Setting

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2011 in the subject Health - Public Health grade: A ( Atlantic International University ) (School of Human and social studies) course: Clinical epidemiology language: English abstract: Definitions:focus on the advantages and disadvantage of drugs hence their effects. This let Kenneth Rothman 2002 to say: ''outcomes research marries epidemiologic methods with clinical decision theory to determine which therapeutic approaches are the most cost-effective''. [10] This approach has lead to the concept of evidence -based medicine where sufficient proof are available to support a medical theory in disease management and promotion of various guidelines useful in clinical setting.Nonetheless more medical and non medical conditions are still undiagnosed under- diagnosed or wrongly diagnosed. As a consequence extra less cost-effective and unnecessary treatments are being prescribed. In this scenario would the key to evidence- based medicine lie on diagnosis processes which are opaque to quantification and analysis or on the deep-rooted knowledge of disease natural history its transmission chain and physiopathology or on the accuracy of diagnostic tests which have different level of interpretations according to their sensitivity or specificity? Or on prevention inputs to control the disease outcomes?In Zambia roughly 80000 infants are born annually from HIV infected mothers and are at risk of contracting the disease. An average of 20000 are born with HIV each year (40%).The rate of vertical transmission varies from 15-25% in non-breastfeeding infants and double in breastfeeding ones. (Ministry of HealthNational Protocol Guidelines 2010). [14] For this research paper focused on PMTCT we selected data for 3 years study from 2008 to 2010.This was a retrospective cohort study. The data included all pregnant women who attended ANC those who were counselled and tested for HIV and those who delivered at the facility