Community HIV/AIDS Services in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Armed Forces
Abstract
Metabiota and Labyrinth will provide technical assistance to the Democratic Republic of Congo Armed Forces (FARDC) to strengthen their HIV prevention, care and treatment program. Metabiota will work with the FARDC to implement a comprehensive HIV program in line with national and PEPFAR orientations to contribute to the epidemic control of HIV, focused on the following technical areas: Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC), HIV (Priority Populations) Prevention (HVOP), Military Health Systems Strengthening (OHSS) and HIV Strategic Information (HVSI). Activities will support the prevention of HIV and STI infections among military personnel, families, and civilian communities. Metabiota will focus on military capacity building to support the provision of care and treatment and scale up military care linkages in the community to ART services to achieve the 90-90-90 goals for HIV epidemic control, working with DRC military to build community capacity and robust military outreach systems for HIV prevention, care and treatment. As the FARDC currently provides HIV care and treatment services at 20 integrated military health facilities, Metabiota will work directly with the FARDC to aggressively scale-up targeted community testing services in an effort to assure that 90% of HIV+ military personnel in high HIV-burden military community locations are diagnosed and know their status. Metabiota will work hand in hand with FARDC to ensure that identified positives are linked to HIV treatment, which will be an important measure of success for the FARDC program. This Metabiota and Labyrinth-supported FARDC « Eliyka project » (meaning ‘Hope’ in Lingala) for OVC aims to make a marked difference in the lives of 2,267 Orphans and Vulnerable Children and their families and caregivers affected by HIV/AIDS by increasing their access to scarce but crucial resources while also taking into consideration issues of gender, equality, and sustainability. OVCs include at-risk youth who will be provided with sexual/reproductive health and HIV prevention education; 1,950 of these service beneficiaries will be tested for HIV and other STIs and have their HIV status reported to Metabiota and be linked to treatment and/or further prevention services. Metabiota and Labyrinth will support the FARDC in the improved identification of HIV-infected children through index case testing of PLHIV accessing clinical and/or community services. Metabiota will work with the DRC military and other priority populations to select targeted “hotspot” locations in geographically prioritized regions, based on available SABERS prevalence data. In order to promote relevant prevention activities and create demand for clinical services, and to increase awareness, acceptability and uptake of these services, Metabiota will engage Military Outreach Workers (MOW), organized in a supervised community hub-and-spoke approach, using standard case management tools to design and evaluate services to reduce HIV risk and vulnerability. MOWs will provide psychological, social, and prevention services support to both HIV positive patients and their families, and work with military outreach teams (MOTs) to educate participants on prevention services such as sensitization and the provision of condoms, and to facilitate linkage to clinical services. Metabiota will support military teams in targeting HIV prevention interventions to 56,054 high-risk or index case associated military personnel and all OVC and HVOP activities will be tracked through an electronic M&E system. In the Eliyka project, Metabiota will also support the military to strengthen their monitoring systems, allowing collection of quality data on program indicators to inform evidence-based decision making, including quarterly performance and weekly data validation.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jul 06, 2020
- Source ID
- N002441910015
Entities
People
- Olivier Kalombo
Organizations
- United States Navy