Technical Cooperation on Antiretroviral Therapy Scale Up in Zambia

• Published in: Journal of International Health Vol. 25; no. 2; pp. 99 - 105
• Main Authors: NOZAKI, Ikuma, KAKIMOTO, Kazuhiro, DUBE, Christopher, MSISUKA, Charles, NAKASA, Tamotsu, SIMPUNGWE, James B
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English; Japanese
• Published: JAPAN ASSOCIATION FOR INTERNATIONAL HEALTH 25.06.2010; Japan Association for International Health
• Subjects: antiretroviral treatment; HIV and AIDS; mobile ART service; Zambia
• ISSN: 0917-6543
• DOI: 10.11197/jaih.25.99

Zambia is one of the HIV high burden countries in Sub Saharan Africa. Government of Zambia has been expanding Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) service nationwide at district level. However, it is still hard to access to ART service for PLHIVs who live in rural. In terms of accessibility, the service must be expanded to rural health centre level, but there are many challenges to expand the quality services into such resource limited setting, especially in the shortage of health providers. JICA's “Integrated HIV and AIDS Care Implementation Project at District Level” launched at April 2006 to improve the quality and accessibility of HIV and AIDS care services in rural Zambia. Two districts in rural area, namely Mumbwa and Chongwe, were selected as project sites. The Project introduced the “mobile ART service” at rural health centre level using the existing health system. Mobile ART services enable a rural health centre that cannot offer ART by itself to provide ART services through the human resource and technical support/assistance of the District Hospital. Mumbwa and Chongwe District Health Management Team (DHMT) started mobile ART services in the first Quarter of 2007, therefore access to ART service in districts has been improved and contributed to increase of ART clients and reduce the defaulter rate within first 6 months of treatment. The project also tried to introduce the community involvement to overcome the shortage of human resources. We found that Mobile ART services involving the community are beneficial and effective, and help ART services expansion to rural health facilities where resources are limited, and as close as possible to places where clients live. The strategies we experienced were cited in “the National Mobile HIV Services Guidelines” published by the MoH and will be able to be duplicated in other resource-limited areas of not only Zambia but also other developing countries.