Teaching Model

With over 5 million people living with HIV in South Africa, increased access to effective HIV treatment remains imperative.

As South African Governmental healthcare staff continue to see the rapid increase in patient numbers at hospitals and community health centres, primary health clinics have been given increased capacity to provide ARV treatment to patients transferred from hospitals and to initiate new patients on treatment.

The challenges remain overwhelming: there continues to be a lack of sufficient government resources, skills and capacity to meet patient demand and complexity, particularly for children, adolescents and pregnant women.

Provincial governments have recognised this issue. To counteract the lack of resources, they are turning more and more to NGO's. That's where CHIVA Africa comes in.

South African Healthcare professionals still need considerable support to develop sustainable methods and practical skills in HIV/AIDS management, including:

• The basics of Anti Retroviral Treatment
• Dosing and side effects 
• When to start treatment - the later the stage at which people with HIV and AIDS are diagnosed and the subsequent delay in getting people on to treatment has devastating consequences. Of those who were eligible for treatment, when the ARV roll-out began, more than a fifth died, mostly before beginning treatment. 
• Adherence to medication 
• Talking to children and adolescents about their diagnosis 
• Nutrition - and its importance in HIV treatment
• Interpretation of laboratory tests 
• Wider disclosure to peers (including sexual partners)
• Supported transition of your people into the adult treatment programme

All CHIVA Africa volunteers are senior UK health professionals who have the proven expertise, longitudinal experience and the necessary practical skills in HIV care to provide the invaluable support, training and mentoring required by their South African counterparts.

Our teaching model focuses on continuity and sustainability

We provide support, mentorship and practical training only.

WE do NOT treat patients directly.

The result is to empower local staff to improve the efficacy of the service they deliver, leaving knowledge and practical skills behind, with the result that, when we leave, we do not leave deficits in the service, but South African healthcare staff who have increased skills and confidence.

Our model highlights the need for all disciplines of staff to play differing but equally important roles in the management of HIV patients. Doctors, nurses, dieticians, pharmacists, midwives and psychologists -- provide ongoing training, support and mentorship to local staff at clinics and hospitals.

By sharing our experience and knowledge, we are equipping South African Health care professionals with the practical skills to become self reliant, enabling them to provide long-term effective treatment for children with HIV.

In South Africa, understanding the long term effect of HIV on children and adolescents is limited. That's because prior to ART, many children and babies with HIV did not live more than 4 or 5 years. UK health professionals, who have experience of treating children with ART for a decade longer, are ideally placed to assist South African staff to understand the long-term benefits and challenges for children on ART.

KwaZulu-Natal volunteers

CHIVA Africa's volunteer pool is now being bolstered by local KZN staff who have been trained by our UK volunteers and over time have developed immense breadth of experience. They will now travel, together with their UK counterparts to provide mentorship and support to colleagues elsewhere in the country.

This has a number of different benefits: It provides the knowledge and practical experience which is needed elsewhere and provides those professionals with acknowledgment and validation of their expertise. It allows them to bring back to their own clinics ideas and innovations from elsewhere, and starts to develop a professional support network across the country, particularly for more isolated and rural health care professionals, which will be invaluable.