Evaluation of the adoption, fidelity, and effectiveness of the national Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV retention interventions for mother-baby pairs: 2015 and 2020

The Ministry of Health, AIDS Control Program with support from United Nations Children‘s Fund (UNICEF) will conduct a nationwide evaluation of the adoption, fidelity, and effectiveness of the national PMTCT retention interventions for mother-baby pairs in 2022.

This is based on the fact that despite the well-planned and carefully thought interventions since 2015, retention of mother-baby pairs in care in Uganda is still a challenge. This evaluation seeks to measure the extent to which the PMTCT retention interventions for mother-baby pairs were adopted and implemented to fidelity.

These interventions include an appointment tracking system, pre-appointment giving/ expected date of delivery cohorts for mothers, early retention monitoring, birth cohort monitoring, and Dry Blood Spot stickers, among others. Understanding the degree of adoption and implementation of these interventions will facilitate the synthesis of the contribution the interventions had on the ob-served PMTCT retention rates during the intervention period.

The findings will be used to support the improved implementation of initiatives for the retention of mother-baby pairs in care. Some of the PHFP Fellows will participate in conducting interviews with the targeted respondents, data cleaning, analysis, and interpretation.