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Knowledge Hub Newswire - Vol.4 No.13 (Summer 2008)

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IN THIS ISSUE:

Snapshot

These statistics reflect the Regional Knowledge Hub's activities
from its inception in March 2004 through August 2008

  • Knowledge Hub courses held: 188
  • Healthcare professionals trained: 4546
    • Ukraine: 1933
    • Russia: 2106
    • Azerbaijan: 29
    • Estonia: 29
    • Kazakhstan: 68
    • Tajikistan: 24
    • Uzbekistan: 103
    • Moldova: 62
    • Belarus: 137
    • Kyrgyzstan: 55

Ukrainian physicians who have earned nationally recognized advanced professional certification in adult/adolescent or pediatric AIDS treatment through the Knowledge Hub: 169

Knowledge Hub Calendar

The following trainings are scheduled to take place at the Knowledge Hub or affiliated centers
September - November 2008

UKRAINE

September  8-12, 2008
Treatment of TB/HIV Co-infection for IDUs on ST, Kyiv

This will be the first in a series of Tuberculosis/HIV/Substitution Therapy (TB/HIV/ST) co-infection for injecting drug users (IDUs) training courses funded by All-Ukrainian Network of PLWH. The target audience for this course is multidisciplinary teams consisting of infection disease doctor, TB doctor, narcologist and social worker. During the training they will be introduced into peculiarities of care and treatment, including antiretroviral (ART) and TB treatment, for patients with opioid dependence and on substitution therapy. The faculty will also discuss integration of services and team approach. 

September  15-19, 2008
Advanced ART for Adults, Kyiv

The third and final training course will be held for multidisciplinary teams, which will be involved in roll out of access to ART starting January 2009. Among other topics, the group will discuss in depth details of delayed adverse ART reactions, treatment of extrapulmonary TB and combined antiretroviral (ARV) and hepatitis B/C therapy with pegylated interferon and ribavirin.

October  13-17, 2008
October 20-24, 2008
November 3-7, 2008
November 17-21, 2008
Treatment of TB/HIV Co-infection for IDUs on ST, Kyiv 

These are preliminary dates for next TB/HIV/ST training courses funded by All-Ukrainian Network of PLWH. The target audience for this course is multidisciplinary teams consisting of infection disease doctor, TB doctor, narcologist and social worker. During the training they will be introduced into peculiarities of care and treatment including ART and TB treatment, for patients with opioid dependence and on substitution therapy. The faculty will also discuss integration of services and team approach. 

RUSSIA

September 16-18, 2008
Training on adherence to ART, St. Petersburg 

Through the clinical sites of the ATEC in St. Petersburg, AIHA will pilot a new training on adherence to ART (regional curricula developed under the Knowledge Hub initiative and piloted in other NIS countries with the participation of faculty from the ATEC in St. Petersburg). The training will be also followed up on US and Russian partner initiatives in FY07 to strengthen adherence to ART strategies in St. Petersburg. Karina Denvers, the director of AIDS educational and training center, Yale School of Nursing, faculty from the St. Petersburg AIDS Center and ATEC/MAPS are xpected to co-teach the pilot course. A total of 24 physicians, nurses, psychologists and social workers are invited.

October 13-17, 2008
Advanced Pediatric ART, Ust-Izhora 

Pediatric teams from AIHA sites will attend five-day training on pediatric ART in Ust Izhora. This is an advanced course for care-teams that have previously attended the introductory course. The curricula will address ART regimens and adherence to treatment in children, specifics of opportunistic infections (OIs) treatment, co-morbidity management in HIV pediatric patients, advanced issues for nursing and social care for children with HIV. The course consists of lectures, clinical sessions and practical exercises for physicians. UNICEF will cover participants from Irkutsk & Altai.

CENTRAL ASIA

September 8-12, 2008
Advanced ART with Training-of-Trainers (ToT) Component, Samarkand

In collaboration with Central Asia AIDS Control Project (CAAP), Knowledge Hub will conduct this final training course for specialists from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as part of development of Regional Training Center on PLWH Care and Treatment in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The training will be conducted by Knowledge Hub faculty from the USA and Ukraine.

November 17-21, 2008
Advanced ART and Management of Opportunistic Infections with ToT Component 

The training will take place at the St. Petersburg City AIDS Center and will be funded by the Central Asian AIDS Control Project (World Bank) and Strategic Health Partnership Component (USAID). This is an advanced course for physicians that have previously attended the introductory course and on-site mentoring. The faculty will consist of Professor Goebel (Germany) and national trainers - Dr. Rakhmanova, Dr. Musatov and Dr. Stepanova. The participants are faculty from undergraduate and postgraduate medical institutes from Central Asia.

TAJIKISTAN

September 1-5, 2008
ToT training for social workers working in the field of HIV/AIDS, Dushanbe 

Two case managers from Ukraine will introduce group of Tajik social workers into basics of HIV-infection, ARV treatment, adherence to antiretroviral medications. The trainees will learn and practice different teaching methods: lectures, role plays, case discussions, small group discussions, bran storming. Separate session will be dedicated to teaching adults approaches and skills.

Knowledge Hub in Review

These events were hosted by the Knowledge Hub or affiliated centers
from June to August 2008

TRAININGS:

UKRAINE

June 23-27, 2008
Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) in Adults for regional doctors, Kyiv


71 infection disease doctors attended this training course. Most of the trainees were infection disease doctors from central rayon hospitals. Taking into account the National AIDS Center need to provide training to many doctors as soon as possible and that this course is not a part of the serties of ART courses, the basic agenda for ART initiation course was slightly modified: topics on HIV staging and testing, stigma, HBV/HCV coinfection were incorporated into the agenda. The faculty was composed of senior trainer (representative of Lavra AIDS Clinic) and 4 junior trainers who had successfully completed AIDS Knowledge Hub ToT Course.    The training was funded by International HIV/AIDS Aloiance in Ukraine within Global Fund Round 1 program.

July 7-11, 2008
Initiation of Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) in Adults, Kyiv


This initial training on ART for multidisciplinary teams was held at Lavra AIDS Clinic. Infection disease doctors, nurses and social workers learnt about HIV natural history, major ARV drugs and their entry points, indications for ART, its management and adherence promotion. Special section was dedicated to treatment of women, IDUs and patients with TB/HIV co-infection. The training was funded by International HIV/AIDS Alliance in Ukraine within Global Fund Round 1 program.

July 21-25, 2008
Basics of ART in Adults Course, Kyiv


This new training course developed upon request of All-Ukrainian Network of PLWH was aimed to train infection disease doctors on basics of adult ART. Taking into account the urgent demand to train new doctors from AIDS centers, infection disease clinics and prison system, this 5-day course incorporated all major elements of series of ART courses (Initiation, Onsite mentoring and Advanced ART). 38 Medical Doctors (MDs) attended this course. The training was funded by All Ukrainian Network of PLWH within Global Fund Round 6 program.

August 26-29, 2008
On-Site Mentoring of ART in Adults, Vinnytsia and Poltava

Under supervision of Yaroslava Lopatina, MD, from Lavra AIDS Clinic and Tetiana Horiacheva, MD, from Donetsk Oblast AIDS Center multidisciplinary teams discussed real patients in Vinnytsia and Poltava. Cases presented by local doctors covered such issues as indications for ART, ART and treatment of HCV, diagnostics and treatment of TB, side effects of ARVs and others. The training was funded by International HIV/AIDS Alliance in Ukraine within Global Fund Round 1 program.

RUSSIA

June 16-18, 2008
Training on adherence to ART, Orenburg

In a follow up to the partners' efforts to work on strengthening ART adherence programs, three-day training was held at the Information and Training Center created in 2007 by AIHA and the State Medical Academy in Orenburg. The training curricula, which was derived from the Knowledge Hub regional curricula, was adapted by local faculty from the training center with additional adjustments by an ATEC faculty member from St. Petersburg. The training course covered medical, social, and psychological support for vulnerable groups, appropriate follow-up care for pregnant women and children, and main approaches to improve adherence to treatment. One US partner, the Medical Director of Elmhurst Hospital Center, co-taught the training and shared his extensive experience in managing adherence programs in the US.  A total of 22 specialists from Orenburg city and other Eastern Orenburg sites were trained.

June 17-19, 2008
Training on HIV Palliative Care Nursing, Orenburg 

The head nurse of the Elmhurst Hospital Center, together with three local faculty, co-taught the pilot training on palliative care nursing in HIV/AIDS which focused on the needs of terminally ill patients. This course was supported by the Nurses Council of Orenburg. Faculty from the Postgraduate Nurses College in Orenburg and Oblast AIDS Center were involved in curricula revisions and teaching. Course curricula incorporated several teaching modules from the End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium course (Russian version) and several modules on HIV and nursing developed by AIHA and the partners. Seventeen nurses from HIV care settings and HIV/TB units of infectious diseases hospitals from the region attended the training, shared experiences and addressed the huge gap of information on care for severely ill patients with HIV/AIDS. Three trainees in this course are teaching nursing at the regional nursing college and will use this experience to train other students.

June 24-26, 2008
Primary Care and Tolerance Building Workshop, St. Petersburg 

The training was provided to 22 psychologists, social workers and educators from AIDS Center and rehabilitation center. Topics included epidemiological and clinical information on HIV, client communication skills, attitudes toward PLWHA, stigma and discrimination issues. The training was delivered by Svetlana Dvorak, epidemiologist, Olga Kol'tsova, chief of Social Psychology Department, AIDS Center; Yana Tavshunskaya, medical psychologist and Polina Safonova, psychologist.

KAZAKHSTAN

June 26-27, 2008
Adult ART mentoring, Almaty

8 Kazakh caregivers participated in 2-day mentoring as a follow-up to the Initiation ART Course. Uder the faculty's supervision they discussed cases of HIV patients from Almaty AIDS Center which included as follows: selection of optimal ARV regimen, diagnostics and treatment of opportunistic infections, especially TB, managemend of adverse ART reactions and IRIS. This course was the second phase of learning about ART management organized within CAAP project.

KYRGYZSTAN

June 9-10, 2008
On-site adult ART mentoring, Bishkek

In collaboration with Central Asia AIDS Control Project (CAAP), Knowledge Hub conducted on-site adult ART mentoring at clinical site in Bishkek as part of development of Regional Training Center on PLWH Care and Treatment in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The mentoring was held by Knowledge Hub experts from Germany and Russia.

TAJIKISTAN

June 12-13, 2008
Adult ART mentoring, Dushanbe

Dr. Vladimir Musatov, Botkin's Hospital, St-Petersburg and Dr. Pavel Khaykin, HIV-Treatment and Research Unit of the Hospital of J. W. Goethe University, Frankfurt on Main, Germany facilitated this clinical practice for Tajik multidisciplinary teams. This course was the second phase of learning about ART management organized within CAAP project.  

UZBEKISTAN

June 23-24, 2008
Adult ART mentoring, Tashkent

Dr. Aza Rakhmanova, Professor, MAPO, St-Petersburg and Dr. Oksana Golub, Lavra AIDS Clinic, Kiev conducted jointly this on-site mentoring practice for 11 Uzbek caregivers. The group learnt how to evaluate patient before starting ART, how to monitor major side effects and how to treat opportunistic infections in HIV patients. This course was the second phase of learning about ART management organized within CAAP project.

CONFERENCES:

XVII International AIDS Conference in Mexico City
August 3-8, 2008 

The American International Health Alliance (AIHA) showcased its highly successful HIV/AIDS capacity building project being carried out in Eurasia at the XVII International AIDS Conference in Mexico City August 3-8.

During a satellite session on August 3, AIHA Regional Director for Russia Dr. Arsen Kubataev provided an overview of the comprehensive training programs being implemented by the Regional Knowledge Hub for the Care and Treatment of HIV/AIDS in Eurasia. Since 2004, the Kyiv-based Knowledge Hub has conducted more than 190 courses in HIV care and treatment and trained more than 4,652 care providers from 10 countries in the region.

The Care and Treatment Knowledge Hub is part of a synergistic network that includes two sister centers-one in Vilnius, Lithuania, that focuses on harm reduction and another in Zagreb, Croatia, that concentrates on HIV/AIDS surveillance. All three centers operate within the framework of WHO/Europe's project "Capability Strengthening for Improved Utilization of Financial Resources for Fight HIV/AIDS," which is funded by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) as part of its BACKUP Initiative. An AIDS Training and Education Center modeled on the Kyiv Knowledge Hub opened in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in 2006.

HIV/AIDS Resources

USAID logo
Primary funding for EAKN is provided
by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)


Useful links to HIV/AIDS-related information and evidence-based research

The EurasiaHealth AIDS Knowledge Network (EAKN) is a special initiative to identify key resources related to the care and treatment of HIV/AIDS and adapt and translate them for use by health professionals in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The EAKN Library consists of a core set of textbooks and guidelines that have been developed by the world's leading experts on HIV/AIDS. As these materials are updated in English, EAKN updates the Russian-language versions maintained on its Web site. In addition to the core set of key documents, the EAKN Library includes a variety of HIV/AIDS information resources, including patient education materials, articles, and abstracts.

Among the most recently added or updated documents are: 

The EAKN Library is continuing to translate various publications, reviews of the latest articles from the leading peer-reviewed magazines, and recent abstracts from medical conferences.