Annual Meeting Recordings are now available for purchase
310734
Community Integrated Child HIV/AIDS Care and Treatment Clinic: The Experience of Lushoto District Hospital in Tanzania
Monday, November 17, 2014
Veronica Mkusa
,
IMA World Health, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
The Local Partners Excel in Comprehensive HIV & AIDS Service Delivery (LEAD) Project is a PEPFAR funded project designed to ensure people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) and their families experience improved health and wellbeing. Lushoto District Hospital, a hospital supported by the LEAD Project, has a ‘Child-friendly HIV/AIDS Care and Treatment Clinic (CTC)’. Since 2005, Lushoto CTC has managed over 3,800 PLWHAs, of whom 465 are children. To increase enrollment and retention of children the CTC provides holistic care thus expanding access to HIV support services. CTC staff conduct clinics on Saturdays in order to accommodate school children. CTC staff realized the need for a child-friendly CTC that would also provide social needs. Therefore, apart from medical services, children receive nutritional and psychosocial support. The LEAD Project provides mentorship to Lushoto CTC staff on managing the unique needs of children with HIV to include not only medical care, stimulation with writing, entertainment activities and provisions for nutritional services. Costs for nutritional provisions for the child-friendly CTC are covered by the District Health Officials in their annual Council budget. The number of children living with HIV/AIDS attending CTC has increased from two in 2005 to 465 in 2013 due to the commitment and innovation of CTC staff. Lost to follow up has been reduced from 12 children per year to two. This intervention shows the possibility of retaining children with HIV/AIDS through a friendly environment where they are cared for both clinically and socially hence improve their overall quality of life.
Learning Areas:
Implementation of health education strategies, interventions and programs
Learning Objectives:
Explain the benefit of a care and treatment center that apart from medical services also provides social needs.
Explain the importance of having a child-friendly HIV/AIDS care and treatment clinic.
Keyword(s): Children and Adolescents, HIV Interventions
Presenting author's disclosure statement:Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: April McCoy is a Senior Program Officer at IMA World Health in Washington, DC. There she manages the NCD portfolio to include cervical cancer and the Burkitt’s Lymphoma programs in Tanzania. She also backstops a PEPFAR funded HIV/AIDS program, also in Tanzania. Prior to joining IMA, Ms. McCoy was a Program Coordinator at Project HOPE where she provided management oversight to eleven programs in five different countries.
Any relevant financial relationships? No
I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines,
and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed
in my presentation.
