Detailed Mechanism Funding and Narrative

Years of mechanism: 2010 2011 2012

Details for Mechanism ID: 9481
Country/Region: South Africa
Year: 2012
Main Partner: University of the Western Cape
Main Partner Program: NA
Organizational Type: University
Funding Agency: HHS/CDC
Total Funding: $712,499

The project is comprised of a number of activities which directly align with both the 2007-2011 and the draft 2012-2016 NSP, and with important initiatives by the NDOH.The project works with the health sector at several levels (national and provincial policy, nurses, community health workers, linking lab and clinical services); the education sector; local government; information systems, and traditional healers and communities in their interface with government services. It focuses primarily on technical assistance to develop capacities at institutional and systems levels as outlined in the objectives and interventions of the pillars of the new NSP, through systems development, materials development, training of trainers, fostering of community/intersectoral dialogues, and more limited direct training of individuals. The geographic focus is Western and Eastern Cape, KwaZulu Natal, and National government. The activities strengthen capacity at individual, organizational, and systems levels. They go beyond training to enhance capacities to identify, analyse, and address complex problems in a rapidly changing policy and epidemiological environment. The emphasis now shifts from development and implementation to documenting and comparing models of change across activities, sectors, and levels.

Funding for Strategic Information (HVSI): $184,516

UWC will support district and sub-district level capacity development enabling the use of human resource information from various data sources for informed decision-making and planning of the district public health workforce is the main focus of the project. This project works with the full array of partners, most of whom are involved in direct service provision and not in the development and eventual mainstreaming of systems; human resources information systems are severely underdeveloped in South Africa. The project focus on driving activities for standardization and improvement of data quality in health information and human resource information with the support of the project by requesting capacity building through identifying and specifying problematic areas in the use of information and sharing the cost of the workshops. KZN M&E Care Association (TB/HIV Care) is implemented by TB/HIV Care and it involves direct support to developing and implementing stronger TB and HIV systems in Sisonke, and thus contributing to systems-level rather than only project-level and district-level capacity strengthening. The project is also building capacity for M&E at provincial and district levels in KZN in that the M&E officers conduct training on using data to identify strengths and weaknesses in program performance and to inform plans to improve service delivery.Molecular surveillance project supports training and ongoing support to physicians and HIV treatment programmes in monitoring and managing the increasingly important challenge of ARV drug resistance and refinement for the eventual integration into routine laboratory and surveillance systems of the two international open access databases of viral resistance. These databases complement each other and are considered to be the two best HIV drug resistance databases in the world. The transfer of these public, open access databases to southern Africa was supported by many of the top drug resistance physicians, policy makers and researchers in the region, as described in a short publication in Nature. The South African HIV drug resistance guideline committee also endorses it.

Funding for Health Systems Strengthening (OHSS): $350,000

UWCs program for Management And Leadership Training: attempts to educate local government officials that the approach towards the management of HIV AIDS is not confined to the local government sphere but that they should rather adopt a more holistic approach to fighting the pandemic. Within the confines of the local government sphere, the programme has broadened its target audience from initially concentrating on HIV AIDS Programme/Project Manager and Human Resources Managers, to now include a broader spectrum of municipal staff and about 50-60 elected counselors (who volunteer through the South African Local Government Association for training). The above has resulted in training being provided a much broader functional area within municipalities. The preparation of the Country Guideline on HIV AIDS for Local Government was sponsored by the Norwegian government. There is at present no other donor supporting the existing PEPFAR work currently being done at the local government sphere. Activity 2 Improving quality of community health worker (CHW) programs for delivery of HIV/AIDS services: This project seeks to address the lack of coherence on the various aspects of CCW such as the scope of practice, recruitment, training, remuneration and conditions of service and sustainability of work provided by non-profit organization (NPOs) already involved in health care delivery. One of the strategies includes providing technical and advisory support to national and provincial structures involved in the revitalization of Primary Health Services. Specific activities include: 1) Development of M&E systems for community based services as part of our participation in the national PHC re-engineering process. This will include a) support for design of the M&E system b) investigating roles of technology in M&E systems c) active engagement with DOH at national and provincial (especially W Cape) in formulating policy. 2) Support for civil society engagement and representation in national policy development and implementation a) civil society summit and follow-up activities; and 3) Development of evaluation protocols and sites for assessing implementation and impact.

Funding for Sexual Prevention: Other Sexual Prevention (HVOP): $100,000

UWC will support the training of HealthCare Providers and Traditional Health Care Practitioners on collaboration for HIV & AIDS Prevention and Care. This is a critical part of the national health system as it strengthens human capacity of practitioners directly through offering short courses to traditional practitioners on biomedical approaches to HIV, including referral mechanisms to the formal health system. Prevention Through Sports Participation project is in its final phase, now completing the manual and evaluating the effectiveness of the intervention. The project developed a workshop training manual on preventing HIV/AIDS through sports participation that used sports metaphors and sports messages interwoven with established scientific knowledge of HIV/AIDS prevention to constitute unique messages that can be integrated into sports programs. The Program for Health Promotion in Schools and An Interactive TB, HIV/AIDS resource for South African School Learners address both the curriculum content and the skills and competencies support to school principals, teachers, learners, and parents, and learner-led community mobilization, called for in the new NSP. The projects are directly aligned with several objectives and interventions of the new NSP, including: Implement integrated wellness education as part of life skills education in schools and 7.7 Pillar 3: Increase safety and reduce vulnerability

The Health Promoting Schools project targets adolescent youth who are at risk of HIV, but uses a settings approach which includes policy and interventions with duty bearers and rights holders and includes the capacity development of individuals, including school students who are at risk of early unprotected sexual behaviour, teachers and parents as well as organisational capacity development of the school. An Interactive TB, HIV/AIDS resource for South African School Learners uses the development of new Life Orientation curriculum and an interactive mode of delivery to foster capacities and experience in dialogue and application of knowledge. This project works in direct partnership with teachers and learners and the Department of Education (Western Cape and National).

Funding for Biomedical Prevention: Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (MTCT): $77,983

UWC supports the training of Nurse-Midwives In Community Based PMTCT, HIV Prevention and Management Skills And Competencies. The project aims to expand the PMTCT skills development beyond Western Cape by training nurse educators and clinical tutors in both Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces on integration of PMTCT competencies into the pre-service nursing curriculum, and how to teach those competencies to the nurses on training, ongoing supervision and monitoring quality of PMTCT services rendered at clinical sites. The settings for training in Western Cape Province are: University of Stellenbosch. The overall aim is to scale up and roll out training using the PMTCT training manual developed in COP 2010. In the manual, the content is divided into four PMTCT competencies, in line with the DoH National PMTCT policy. This supports the 2012-2016 National Strategic Plans objective to strengthen the management, leadership and coordination of the prevention of mother to child HIV transmission (PMTCT) programme. The Community VCT project is developing a handbook to assist with implementation and integration of PMTCT into PHC improving routine information.

Subpartners Total: $0
TB/HIV Care Association: NA
Cross Cutting Budget Categories and Known Amounts Total: $638,944
Education $190,939
Human Resources for Health $448,005
Key Issues Identified in Mechanism
enumerations.Impact/End-of-Program Evaluation
Workplace Programs