Kento Mwana

Project for the prevention of the transmission of HIV from mother to child in Congo

Eni Foundation collaborates with the Congolese Ministry of Health and the National Council for the Fight against AIDS for the implementation of a four-year project aimed at preventing the vertical transmission of HIV from mothers to their children.

The objective of the “Kento Mwana” (Mother and Child) project is to reduce to 2-3% the vertical transmission of HIV in the maternal-infant population involved (estimated to be 65,000 mother and child pairs), who lives in the Kouilou, Nairi and Cuvette regions. The project will be able to rely on the logistics and the network of healthcare facilities that are either already operational or will soon be in the three regions where the Foundation’s “Salissa Mwana” project is underway.

The initiative is part of a wider program promoted by the country’s health authorities to cope with the progression of HIV, whose prevalence rate among the adult population at the national level is estimated at 3.5%. It will last for four years and will make it possible to extend a strategy and methodology that has already produced significant results and demonstrated its effectiveness and that will, as a result, allow for the treatment of a greater number of pregnant women.

The project represents, in fact, the development, on a national level, of the pilot activity implemented in 2005 in the Pointe Noire area, in the Kouilou region, by the Clinic for Infectious Diseases of the University of Genoa with the support of Eni and revolves around the molecular biology, immunology and serology laboratory for the advanced diagnosis of HIV infection set up and equipped by Eni according to the highest international standards at the Hôpital Régional des Armées (HRA) in Pointe Noire.