Infectious Disease

Adolescent girls in Zambia face social constraints that make girls vulnerable to early pregnancy, HIV, and school dropout. We propose teaching evaluating an innovative Negotiation Skills Curriculum that equips girls with the ability to build healthier futures for themselves. Negotiating a Better Future is run through Innovations for Poverty Action-Zambia.

Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) is one of the most widely used tests for detecting and measuring disease markers; however, its current format is not suitable for use in the developing world. This project will develop a low-cost, paper-based diagnostic device that will enable rapid and sensitive ELISA in resource-limited settings.

Developed by this project, a cell phone gaming app for HIV prevention animates behavioural situations based on local popular culture.  Gamers role-play these situations and receive tangible rewards for good behaviour and penalties for bad behaviour.

Combining a unique diagnostic platform for decentralized blood testing with a two-way communications network for data capture, and the training and supervision of community-level health workers (Kenya) Access to decentralized diagnostics can save millions of lives globally, yet the lack of supervision and training opportunities for overburdened nurses and community health workers in remote settings can negatively affect quality of testing and care provided.

An integrated technological and self-testing strategy which offers confidentiality and reduces stigma. This project will develop a self-testing strategy for HIV that is in tune with people's needs and optimized within the public health system for South Africa.

To assess the feasibility of operating a private fee-for-service clinic catering to middle-income patients within a large, publicly funded HIV clinic in Uganda caring for 10,000 HIV patients. If successful, it would help fund care for poorer patients currently supported by potentially unstable government and NGO funding.

Almost one in six people are HIV-positive in Njombe - a region with Tanzania's most uninformed population when it comes to the disease, according to surveys, and the country's highest rate of infection, now increasing among young adults. The area has no formal HIV education program and many children are orphans lacking parental guidance. This project will expand a pilot-tested, site-crafted, formally evaluated HIV/AIDS youth peer health educator program into primary schools in HIV-ravaged rural Tanzania, to empower youth in making healthy decisions.

Phase I - Proof of Concept study to evaluate the feasibility of using the Shang Ring, a novel male circumcision device across all childhood age groups namely infants (under 1), 1-5 age group, 6-12 age group and the 13-17 age group.

In SSA, HIV treatment is now widespread and mortality has dropped 32% since 2005.  HIV-related disability is growing in tandem and rehabilitation training is needed.  The University of Toronto International Centre for Disability and Rehabilitation will create an online resource to address this need in SSA, adapted from Canadian practices.

In Kenya, majority (84%) of HIV-infected individuals are not aware of their status and one-third of these reported not testing because they did not perceive themselves to be at risk. We propose to use text messages to raise HIV awareness and increase HIV testing among young women in colleges in rural Kenya.