Funded by Positive Action for Children Fund (PACF) under ViiV HealthCare, the two years (2017-2019) project is aiming at building community, patient and family centred approaches to help in reducing on the impact of HIV/AIDS on women’s and children’s health through;
- Working with Village Health Teams (VHTs) to strengthen their capacity to extend Prevention of Mother-to-Child HIV Transmission (PMTCT) information and reduce on loss to follow up among HIV positive pregnant and nursing mothers in rural communities,
- Train and equip local and religious leaders with basic information about PMTCT such that they can continue encouraging pregnant, nursing mothers and their partners to seek care from health facilities and also encourage male involvement in PMTCT programmes,
- Carry out community based PMTCT campaigns focusing much on Early Infant Diagnosis (targeting mostly pregnant and nursing mothers),
- Build capacity of rural health workers to strengthen health education among HIV positive women and their partners in rural communities. Capacity building is focusing on areas of Early Infant Diagnosis (EID), breast feeding among HIV positive mothers, complementary feeding for babies and other nutritional information for children and mothers,
- Strengthening active linkage of HIV positive mothers (pregnant and nursing mothers) from the point of HIV testing to the point of HIV care in order to reduce on the incidences of HIV positive mothers going back without getting HIV care which increases the risk of mothers transmitting HIV to their babies and
- Carry out health facility based trainings for pregnant and nursing mothers about the importance of taking their ARVs, importance of testing their children for 1st DNA/PCR, 2nd DNA/PCR and a Rapid HIV Test at 18 months.
