Achievements in the last three years

We have achieved many achievements during the past program period. We plan to reinforce and scale them up with subsequent funding. These include:

HIV Counseling and Testing (HCT)
This has been one of IRCU’s biggest achievements, achieving 201% of the contractual obligation. The number of individuals counseled, tested and given results is 160,871 compared to the target of 80,000. IRCU was able to reach all these people with HCT services through church structures, utilizing every religious gathering (prayer days and other activities) to talk about the importance of testing and accessing available services. Religious leaders were also going out in the communities along other stuff for outreaches and HCT promotions and campaigns.

Rapid expansion of palliative care to 45,074 (16,368 male and 28,706 female)
All HIV positive clients enrolled into chronic care either at the site where they were tested or referred to facilities nearer to them. Many clients who had been accessing services far from their homes were now enrolled onto the IRCU-supported HIV programs nearer to them. Over the last three years, IRCU has supported through the 20 implementing partner, services to over 45,000 people living with HIV and AIDS.

The care given to them includes cotrimoxazole prophylaxis, clinical and laboratory monitoring, home based care services for those that cannot come to the facilities, testing for sexually transmitted infections such as syphilis, distribution of long lasting treated insecticide mosquito nets.

Health workers were trained in service delivery. Those trained included laboratory personnel, clinicians in ART care, diagnosis and treatment of OIs, religious leaders and counselors etc.

Antiretroviral Therapy
IRCU started off with 8 sites accredited by Ministry of Health to offer ART services but worked with Ministry, and built capacity of other sites that later also started offering the service. Currently, IRCU supports 13 sites in ART and the number of clients on ART 4,683.

Quality assurance/Quality improvement strategy
The quality of care HIV clients get is very important. IRCU with assistance from AIDS Capacity Enhancement (ACE) developed a quality assurance/quality improvement strategy to ensure that the services the IPs are offering are of quality.

Collaborations and networks
IRCU did not achieve the above alone but through collaborations with other stake holders such as JCRC that offered laboratory monitoring services especially CD4 tests, and training of laboratory personnel, Ministry of Health that also trained health workers, Infectious Diseases Institute-Mulago, Mild May, PSI that trained and distributed starter kits to the IPs among others.