Kwazulu Natal enters the TB/HIV Care Fold

With a long, 80-year history of successfully supporting patients in Cape Town and its surrounding areas, TB/HIV Care Association is well equipped to tackle a new challenge, and welcome a district in KZN under its umbrella of care.

Last year the organisation expanded its services to the Sisonke district in Kwazulu Natal, a province in desperate need of further support. TB/HIV Care is offering a range of services across the continuum of TB and HIV health care – from counselling and testing services (sometimes set up in gazebos next to clinics and hospitals because of a lack of space) to antiretroviral and treatment support.

Counselling and testing has been very successful in the Sisonke district with 68% of those tested reached outside of hospitals and clinics. This means that the outreach programmes that TB/HIV Care has implemented in KZN in farms, correctional facilities and via mobile teams have had a significant impact. The number of men accessing testing and counselling is still relatively low, so there is hope that these outreach programmes, which take place outside clinical settings, will reach more men.

TB/HIV Care has also put a significant amount of effort into ensuring that patients do not slip through the cracks in the health system once diagnosed. Lay counsellors often escort patients from one facility to the next so that they do not get lost in the complex referral system. Community care givers and community health facilitators have been employed to trace and follow up with patients once diagnosed to ensure that they continue to receive care even if they are not yet eligible for AR treatment. A booking system has also been implemented to ensure that accurate records are kept of whether patients keep appointments.

Patients who are eligible for ART are also being looked after by TB/HIV Care. The organisation has identified several challenges to accessing treatment - among them a shortage of doctors who can initiate patients into ART and very long waiting lists of patients needing to start treatment. To help find a solution, TB/HIV Care is meeting with the hospitals and clinics concerned to try and increase the number of patients who can start treatment every month.

With all these initiatives in place, TB/HIV Care seems well set to start filling in the gaps in health care in KZN just as it continues to do in the Western Cape.

Sources
TB/HIV Care Association 021 425 0050 www.tbhivcare.org