Project Name
Primary Health Care Project

Project Focus
HIV Care & Treatment

Project Location
City of Johannesburg Region 8 Primary Health Care (PHC) Facilities

Duration of Project
Ongoing since October 2005

Project Partners
City of Johannesburg, Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI)

Project Donors
PEPFAR

Contact
Maria Sibanyoni, Senior Project Co-ordinator: Primary Health Care Project

Project Aim/ Objective
To strengthen the public health response to HIV and AIDS through support to PHC facilities to roll out the DoH comprehensive HIV and AIDS plan in order to maximise the number of people receiving quality care.

Project Activities
The Primary Health Care project provides support to public sector primary health care (PHC) facilities, in order to facilitate the implementation and improvement of quality HIV care at a grass roots level, thereby increasing the number of people accessing HIV care. Support takes the form of technical assistance, on site support, formal and informal training and capacity building, and the revision of service delivery models, or the development of new models as required.

A critical component of the work is the promotion of quality improvement. RHRU uses a number of quality improvement approaches, depending on the context in which they are working. The project works by providing substantial weekly on-site support to PHC facilities to build capacity to implement and improve integrated HIV services.

The team also works to develop and maintain links between primary, secondary and tertiary facilities to promote referral networks within the deprived inner city of Johannesburg. To support this process, RHRU has worked with other stakeholders to develop standards and tools in order to identify gaps in current HIV care service delivery. RHRU works in a holistic manner in the sites, providing support to all elements of primary health care, in order to improve HIV care in a broader context.

This project began in late 2005, and is currently beginning to roll out in Region 8 PHC clinics in partnership with the City of Johannesburg Health Services.

Anticipated/Actual Results

• Situational analyses of 6 primary health care clinics
• Development of PHC standards to ensure ARV treatment accreditation and to support the provision of nurse-delivered HIV care
• Training of Region 8 nurses to enable them to perform WHO clinical staging
• Regular quality improvement meetings with clinic staff
• Two “collaborative” meetings held to network local clinics and enable them to share their quality improvement learnings.

Additional Outputs

• PHC standards and tools documents to aid the quality improvement and accreditation process.

Future Plans

• Roll out of HIV standards
• Full implementation of pilot and evaluation of programme, with a view to scale up

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