The National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) played a pivotal role in the 2nd Tanzania Child Health and Welfare Congress, held from 23rd – 25th July 2025 in Arusha, by spotlighting cutting-edge digital solutions to advance child health care.
During the Congress, NIMR hosted a high-impact symposium themed “Leveraging Digital Health Innovations to Improve Care for HIV-Exposed Infants: From Research to Real-World Implementation.”
The symposium brought together key national and international stakeholders and featured a presentation from the Ministry of Health on Tanzania’s national digital health strategies. Representing the EDCTP2-funded LIFE2Scale consortium, NIMR shared practical insights and implementation experiences from piloting the Unified Community System (UCS) laboratory module across Tanzanian healthcare settings.
Preliminary results from the UCS pilot demonstrate promising potentials in reducing turnaround times for Early Infant Diagnosis (EID) and Viral Load (VL) test results which are crucial milestones in the timely care of HIV-exposed infants.
The LIFE2Scale consortium is a multidisciplinary African-European partnership working closely with the Ministries of Health in Tanzania and Mozambique. Its mission is to accelerate sustainable, evidence-based innovations in child health from policy to practice.
Through its participation, NIMR reaffirmed its commitment to driving research-led digital transformation in healthcare and strengthening national efforts to improve child survival and well-being.