Background and Funding

Since 1989, children living with HIV presenting to treatment services and infants born to women living with HIV in the UK and Ireland have been notified to the National Surveillance of HIV in Pregnancy and Childhood (NSHPC) based at Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health using maternity and paediatric reporting systems. Notifications of pregnancies among women living with HIV are made through active online maternity reports. Paediatric notifications of all HIV exposed infants as well as those diagnosed with HIV after birth are also made securely online. Paediatric data collected by the NSHPC includes demographic data and details of test results to establish infection status.

In 2000, CHIPS was established to gather more detailed follow-up data on children living with HIV reported to the NSHPC. The NSHPC notifies CHIPS of any children with confirmed HIV infection, and for each of these children a baseline and follow-up CHIPS questionnaire is sent to the respective clinic for completion.

CHIPS initially included 16 UK and Irish clinics enrolling children into PENTA trials (the Paediatric European Network for the Treatment of AIDS). During the first year of CHIPS, baseline information was collected on all children in follow-up at participating clinics since 1 January 1996. However since 2003, follow-up information and selective baseline information has been collected from new clinics joining CHIPS.

Funding: CHIPS is funded by NHS England (London Specialised Commissioning Group) and has received additional support from the PENTA Foundation as well as Abbott, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Boehringer Ingelheim, Gilead Sciences, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen, Roche, and ViiV Healthcare.  This work was supported by the Medical Research Council programme grant MC_UU_12023/26 awarded to the MRC Clinical Trials Unit.