Cenrid

02/12/2025

🚨 What Happens When a Lifeline Disappears? 🌍

For decades, USAID has been a key player in global development—funding health programs, supporting small businesses, and ensuring millions of children get an education. But now, its potential shutdown is sending shockwaves through low- and middle-income countries. What does this mean for communities relying on life-saving aid? And how can nations adapt to fill the gap?

Dive into the full story and explore the way forward. ⬇️

https://www.cenrid.org/post/when-aid-disappears-a-crisis-for-global-development-and-the-path-forward

02/29/2024

Meet Lucy Mbewe. Lucy is a molecular technologist at the Zomba Central Hospital. Lucy and her other colleagues received training on the utilization of the HIVQuant kit for early HIV diagnosis and viral load monitoring among patients receiving antiretroviral therapy. Lucy's role at the hospital focuses on the extraction, purification, and quantification of total HIV-1 nucleic acid in plasma and PBMC, among others. Lucy is glad to be part of this novel study.

"I was particularly excited to be among the first laboratory scientists to be exposed to this laboratory-developed assay. It provides a better option to enable quicker screening of thousands of samples at a cheaper cost and labor with greater diagnostic accuracy and precision"

The implementation of the HIVQuant pilot study at the Zomba Central Hospital is part of our efforts to strengthen the country’s clinical laboratory systems. The first stage of our capacity-building approach involves enhancing the knowledge and strengthening the required competence of the laboratory personnel at the Zomba Central Hospital in alternative point-of-care(POC) viral load monitoring systems. Additional capacity-building activities focused on equipment, calibration, and validation, including IQ, PQ, and OQ validations, will be conducted as part of the main study, which will seek to evaluate the efficacy of the HIVQuant assay.

Visit www.cenrid.org to learn more about the HIVQuant Pilot Study.

07/12/2023

Did you know? The Buvuma Girls Empowerment Project saw a 120% increase in women willing to speak out against gender-based violence- including s*xual assault. This development is key to reducing the improving gender equality- and reducing the incidence of HIV transmission in the most vulnerable communities.

07/04/2023

We'd like to wish all of our American friends- whether you're celebrating at home or abroad- a very happy Fourth of July!

06/27/2023

Hunger increased for the fourth straight year in 2022 due to global conflicts, climate change, and post-COVID recovery driving up food prices. Flown-in food relief is not sufficient to solve this- for long term change, we must put effort into agricultural interventions. To learn more- and get involved in our work against these crises- visit https://www.cenrid.org/research/food-security.

06/16/2023

Smoke from the Canadian wildfires blanketed much of the United States last week, including New York's Capital Region. With asthma already being a major problem here, the polluted air only served to make the disease worse for countless people- but especially those in poverty, who already face worse barriers to quality healthcare. This just reinforces the urgent need for health equity worldwide. Read more about this crisis here:

Low-income communities and urban areas tend to have higher asthma rates

06/14/2023

In case you missed it: We recently hosted a table to raise asthma awareness and education in New York's Capital Region, a first step towards our anti-asthma program. We'd like to thank the Bethlehem YMCA for having us! To learn more about asthma and our work, visit https://www.cenrid.org/research/asthma.

05/29/2023

Memorial Day is a day of mourning- and a day of gratitude. It is a day when we remember those who gave their lives in the defense of America, and those who continue to lay their lives on the line every day. From the bottom of our hearts, we thank the men and women who have served.
Happy Memorial Day, everyone.

05/24/2023

Program Spotlight time! The Buvuma Girls Empowerment Project, or BUGEP, provided comprehensive s*x and family education to adolescent women in Uganda's Buvuma district.
Worldwide, over half of people with HIV are females aged 10-24, leading to hundreds of infections each day, millions of deaths, and gross health burdens. Through BUGEP, our services included:
-Family planning counseling
-HIV diagnosis
-HIV awareness sessions
-Community outreach to boost awareness
In doing so, we sought to narrow and reframe gender disparities while bolstering positive attitudes towards new norms. This approach fostered the prevention of new HIV cases- and needless suffering for the most vulnerable populations. To learn more, visit https://www.cenrid.org/programs/bugep.

05/18/2023

Asthma doesn't affect everyone equally- and most risk factors are beyond personal control. This is why, for long-term progress against the disease, public health and proper care are so crucial.

05/10/2023

For healthier lives- and a greater world- we're making sure children get the nutrients they need through our Vitamins+Minerals project. Learn more at CenRID.org.

05/05/2023

Our team got to meet in Washington, D.C. for a meetup. It was great to have everyone together- and talk about the things to come!