VCT with TB and STI screening
TB/HIV Care Association has established 5 non-clinical voluntary counseling and HIV testing (VCT) teams. Each team consists of a professional nurse counselor, two lay counselors and one community mobiliser. There are fixed community sites in Atlantis, Malmesbury and Vredenburg. Two mobile VCT teams have provided services in prisons, farms, factories and other workplaces.
HIV prevention training workshops with youth at the Ilingalethu Multipurpose Community Centre
I like my job because you help people and people need help. I give tablets to all TB patients. We also do go and visit anyone who is too sick to come or those that cant come in to give them their medication.
In 2007 TB/HIV Care Association were awarded a PEPFAR grant administered through the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. Project Integrate is an extension of the TB Care programme and aims to integrate TB and HIV care.
Training of TB/HIV care workers
Immizamo Yethu Hout Bay
Ncumisa – Brooklyn Chest Hospital
I love being with children, I love to see them stimulated, I love to see them happy, I love to see them being children. I am an educare teacher. My job is to stimulate the children, they learn through playing. The first time I came here, they just left the children in the cots the whole day. Now when the children see me they know we are out of the cots and they start jumping with joy.
Nomhle Koliwe, 39
I really like this work. I want to learn more. I had a sister who was sick, she died in February. We didn’t know what was wrong with her, we didn’t know the symptoms of TB and HIV. She was just coughing, we didn’t take care of that cough. I want to learn more so that I can tell other people. No one must die. I am looking after my sister’s little girl who is positive because she was breastfed. I want to learn so I can help the little one.
I want to teach the people that TB is curable. They also don’t understand why you can get TB again when you treat it and it is curable. They don’t understand why they get MDR or XDR TB. I like to talk to people. TB must finish now – it will if everyone finishes their treatment.
Stella – District co-ordinator – supervises treatment supporters who do home visits
A challenge in my work is when some of the people in a household are not interested in being tested. Its difficult to motivate people to be tested – I tell them its nice to know are negative. Its important not to infect the children as they end up being the sickest in the family and then need to be in hospital. Its frustrating people don’t go for tests even after you have visited after them for the second and third time. It’s so important to look after the children.
TB/HIV Care Association is an NPO that aims to improve TB management by increasing access to TB and HIV diagnosis, care, treatment and community-based adherence support.
They focus specifically on the challenges associated with undiagnosed and untreated TB, HIV and STIs. By addressing these challenges they aim to decrease morbidity and mortality, decrease transmission, and improve clinical response.
Their integrated approach to addressing both TB and HIV issues has proved the organisation to be a pioneer in implementing a parallel system of support for TB and HIV clients.