Testing for HIV does not simply end with the diagnosis that the virus is present in a patient; caregivers also need to track the disease’s progress to adjust ongoing treatment. Yet tests for monitoring HIV infection require sophisticated instruments, well-trained clinicians and expensive lab ware. All those are in short supply on HIV’s front line in places such as rural sub-Saharan Africa. “It’s a problem not just of cost,” explains hematologist Helen Lee of the University of Cambridge in the UK. “It’s a problem of having access.” In the last year, stripped-down standalone tests have appeared on the market, offering rural patients a cheaper, faster count of their CD4 immune cells. And in the coming months, a class of tests that measure viral load should enter routine point-of-care use, too, offering caregivers a choice of simple tools for measuring HIV infections.
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