Mobile technology battles HIV

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1. Saba
   

   "When I arrived here, I saw people with HIV being carried all day to get to the clinic," Paul Williams recalls.
   
   "There were no testing services, no education, no treatment and certainly no monitoring of treatment. People just died."
   
   That was the situation in Bwindi, Uganda, three years ago. Dr Williams, formerly a GP in North-East England, has since transformed a tiny and very basic health centre on the edge of the Impenetrable Forest into an efficient community hospital.
   Community ambulance
   
   
   And for the past five months, thanks to a small but important piece of equipment, Dr Williams' medical team has been able to monitor the health of patients with HIV from a clinic that fits into the back of their four-wheel-drive "community ambulance".
   
   Bwindi Community Hospital now provides health care for about 40,000 people.
   
   It has a dedicated maternity programme and a children's ward that deals with many cases of malnutrition, as well as other common diseases including malaria and HIV. In total, the hospital takes care of 1,000 HIV positive patients.
   
   Dr Williams describes the environment in which he works: "We're a mile away from the rainforest where there are mountain gorillas, right on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
   
   "There aren't any tarmac roads here, there isn't any public transport, and lots of the patients live a day's walk from the hospital. Many of them live a subsistence existence and they can't afford to get here."
   
   So his team packs an "HIV outreach clinic" into its vehicle, and takes it out to remote communities.
   
   Along with the rest of the equipment loaded into the back and strapped on to the roof of the ambulance, there is one modest-looking grey box.
   
   This piece of equipment is a PointCare NOW machine. It was donated to the hospital last year, and has since transformed the care Dr Williams can offer HIV patients.
   
   The machine is a portable blood-testing device - pop in a blood sample and, within 10 minutes, it gives a print-out detailing the condition of a patient's immune system.
   
   It counts CD4 positive T cells. These are the white blood cells that the HIV virus latches on to - attacking and destroying them.
   
   "When we say someone has a weak immune system because of HIV, we mean their number of CD4 cells is low," explains Dr Williams.
   
   "During the course of infection, the number of these cells gets less and less - so you have to count them to see how advanced the HIV is."

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