Summary

Program goals

The Initiative aims at improving and accelerating direct access to life-saving care and HIV/AIDS treatment to more people throughout the country in easily accessible locations and effectively deliver antiretroviral treatment to persons living with HIV/AIDS in resource-constrained settings.

Key program components

In the Uganda Cares model, the Ugandan Ministry of Health provides the physical clinic sites on the grounds of district hospitals, as well as some staffing, laboratory and sub-specialty support. AHF then operates the programs, including all clinical staffing, provides operational support and hires and mentors medical providers such as HIV medics who then take on some of the clinical, counselling and administrative responsibilities from nurses and doctors. This makes it possible for the clinic team to care for and treat larger numbers of patients.

AHF Uganda Cares partnered with Development Initiatives International (DII) to provide care in urban markets in Kampala thus forming The Market Vendors Project clinic which allows market vendors and their families to access care without losing important, productive work hours; and for its HIV Routine Counselling and Testing project, AHF Uganda Cares partners with RTI and runs an HIV Mass Testing program in partnership with districts, NGOs, the Ministry of Health and the Uganda AIDS Commission. It has also developed the Socio-Economic Empowerment Project (SEEP) to provide financial training and micro-loans to people living with HIV/AIDS since the program has seen hundreds of its patients become well enough to work but their productivity being limited by a lack of resources.

AHF developed the “HIV Medic” program, where a practical training course is offered to lay people to gain the skills to become paraprofessional extenders of treatment who provide basic triage and intensive adherence support, and assist in the provision of ART. This is done to address the shortage of healthcare workers in resource-constrained settings.

Patients' health progress is monitored where those on ARVs are initially seen weekly for the first 4 weeks, then fortnightly for another 4 weeks, and then monthly if clinically stable and responding to the ARV regimen. Uganda Cares serves 50,000 adult and pediatric patients. In 2010, AHF distributed 3.6 million condoms countrywide, tested about 206,000 clients and identified 9,400 positive people that were referred to care.

Since the 1990s Uganda has been struggling with the HIV/AIDS epidemic that reached a prevalence rate of 15% at its peak and It is estimated that currently about 1.2 million Ugandans are living with HIV which is equivalent to about 6.5% of the total population. Despite the country's policies to reduce the HIV prevalence, less than 45% of people living with HIV receive the life-saving antiretroviral treatment (ART) since a number of people find them inaccessible thereby increasing the number of people dying due to AIDS and HIV-related illnesses in the country. To address such a challenge, AIDS Healthcare Foundation partnered with the Uganda Ministry of Health to operate the AHF – Uganda Cares program.