Founded in 2002, The Clinton Health Access Initiative, Inc. (CHAI) was established to address the scale of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the developing world by scaling up antiretroviral treatment. When CHAI was founded, many viewed this goal as unreasonable because health systems in a number of developing countries were weak and prices of relevant drugs and diagnostic tests were too high. CHAI developed programmes, working alongside governments and other partners, to lower the costs of treatment and help build the in-country systems necessary to provide lifesaving treatment to HIV/AIDS patients.

CHAI is currently setting up an office in Senegal, and the first programme in-country aims to offer accelerated access to early infant diagnostic and viral load testing. The goal of this project is to speed clinical decision-making, thereby enabling earlier treatment initiative for HIV positive infants.

Additionally, CHAI is working on two other projects:

• It has been asked to support the Senegalese Universal Health Coverage Agency (UHCA), which is in charge of subsidising a number of care services for children aged 0-5 years, to achieve its ambitious vision of covering 80% of the population by 2021.
• It is also supporting the Hepatitis Programme in decentralising access to Hepatitis B screening, diagnosis and treatment in one region of Senegal, as well as the Cancer Institute to support their goals of cervical cancer elimination.

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