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Since 2001 Seke Rural Home Based Care has been implementing home based care and palliative careinterventions to improve the quality of life for people affected and infected by HIV. SRHBC relies heavily on volunteer caregivers who are the backbone of the organisation. There are a total of 1023 caregivers and all of them have been trained in Home Based Care but only 145 have been trained in palliative care due to limited resources. The caregivers assist in identification, referral and monitoring of HIV positive clients through adherence education and monitoring. They are also responsible for coordinating support groups at community level.

The organisation is also involved in OVC care through addressing education, Health and social protection needs of children. The Education component comprises of direct school fees payment and payment of fees through proceeds from School Development Committee income generating activitieswhich were funded by SRHBC. The Health interventions include School Health Assessments, Adolescent Sexual Reproductive Health for in school youths and assistance for HIV positive children using the Integrated Management of Peadiatric HIV AIDS Care and Treatment (IMPACT) model. The IMPACT model was piloted in Seke District by Seke Rural HBC and was very successful. The model has been documented and handed over to the Ministry of Health at national level which is now cascading the model to other District of the country. Social protection interventions include psychosocial support groups, support for child protection committees and counselling for children and their families. The organisation mainstreams livelihoods and gender in all its programming.

Monday, 8 September 2014

Bantwana Article on Seke Rural Home Based Care

http://bantwana.org/helping-health-workers-go-the-extra-mile/


Helping Health Workers Go the Extra Mile

By early 2000, an estimated 160,000 children were living with HIV in Zimbabwe and only 1-in-16 had access to life-prolonging antiretroviral drugs. In order to provide better access to health interventions in rural areas, organizations like Seke Rural Home Based Care (Seke) were established. Initially, home-based care programs only focused on adults, and children were left out of HIV and AIDS interventions. It was a challenging time for field workers like Stella Paraziva, who was one of Seke’s first staff members.
A child receives an HIV test from a Bantwana-trained community home-based caregiver.
A child receives an HIV test from a Bantwana-trained community home-based caregiver.
Over the next decade, Stella conducted home visits to patients with HIV and AIDS. Due to limited resources, she traveled to patients’ homes on foot, walking up to fifteen miles a day with a bag of medicine on her back, and only two rolls of bread to sustain her throughout the day. By the time she reached the village, Stella had precious little time to treat those that were suffering, and even less time and resources available to help children who needed HIV and AIDS care and support.
In response, Bantwana’s Children First program began working with field workers like Stella, nurses, and local clinics to provide treatment to children who were excluded from critical health care services. Together, they established the Integrated Management Pediatric AIDS Care and Treatment (IMPACT) program.
Field worker on motorbike
With the help of a Bantwana-provided motorbike, this caregiver can now travel many miles to reach children in need of critical HIV care and support.
Under the IMPACT model, Bantwana and Seke trained community home-based caregivers to identify HIV-positive children and encourage them to go for HIV testing, CD4 counts, antiretroviral therapy, and psychosocial support. These caregivers are trained volunteers who live in the communities and provide routine visits to patients, relieving field workers of some of their workload. To better serve children in remote communities, Bantwana also donated motorbikes to Seke, which enable caregivers and field workers like Stella to travel up to 100 miles a day, thus reaching more children with critical HIV and AIDS services.
“Many of these children did not have anyone to talk to, to comfort them and offer them security,” Stella explains. “Now, even if they have enlarged lymph nodes or a skin disease, they won’t feel inferior. They will know that there is someone who cares, someone who asks if they are adhering to their medication, someone who checks up on them.”
Bantwana’s IMPACT program has succeeded in refocusing health care on the children who were left out of home-based HIV and AIDS services. Thanks to IMPACT, Seke now has more than 400 caregivers who support field workers like Stella Paraziva in placing over 170 children on life-saving antiretroviral therapy, in addition to offering psychosocial support to hundreds of others. With the provision of the motorbikes and the additional trained community home-based caregivers, Seke can now effectively collect CD4 counts and better reach patients for counseling and ART adherence monitoring, thus improving the lives of orphans and vulnerable children in rural Zimbabwe.
“Our children are our future, our tomorrow,” says Stella. “We cannot replace their parents, but we can continue to help and protect them until they grow up.”
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