Tanzania
Overview
I-TECH has been invited to collaborate with the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Global AIDS Program (CDC GAP) and the Tanzania Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (MOHSW) to strengthen training and support for health care workers in the care and treatment of individuals with HIV and AIDS. I-TECH's activities in Tanzania focus on building the necessary human resources and infrastructure for training health care workers and on building capacity to provide HIV and tuberculosis (TB)/HIV services, including antiretroviral therapy (ART).
Program Highlights
Strengthening the Zonal Health Resource Centres (ZHRC) Network. I-TECH is using its extensive training network experience to strengthen the capacity of the eight existing ZHRCs to coordinate, support, monitor, and evaluate decentralized HIV and AIDS training for health care workers throughout Tanzania. I-TECH also includes Zanzibar in its capacity-strengthening activities with the ZHRCs. I-TECH's capacity-building activities include:
- Developing and delivering a course on HIV fundamentals to enable ZHRC faculty to train students of health training institutions.
- Sponsoring ZHRC faculty to attend trainings on HIV and tuberculosis (TB).
- Strategizing on the use of distance learning technologies to meet training needs, based on findings from a capacity assessment on distance learning.
- Assisting the ZHRCs in the development of a database to capture data about training activities.
- Assisting ZHRCs to develop annual workplans and monitoring and evaluation (M & E) plans.
- Developing strategies to strengthen the financial systems and the informational resources of the ZHRCs.
Strengthening Pre-service Education. I-TECH is working with the MOHSW to ensure that future graduates (currently clinical assistants and clinical officers) enter clinical practice appropriately prepared to provide HIV and TB/HIV care and treatment. To this end, I-TECH provides a model for integrating the full-range of training modalities necessary to support transfer of learning, including classroom-based and onsite clinical training. Further, I-TECH is working closely with the MOHSW to:
- Integrate HIV and TB/HIV content and competencies into pre-service curricula.
- Strengthen capacity of tutors at pre-service institutions to teach effectively about HIV and TB/HIV.
- Increase HIV and AIDS resources available to pre-service training institutions.
Strengthening HIV-Related In-service Curricula and Training. I-TECH, in collaboration with the National AIDS Control Programme (NACP), revised and enhanced the national curriculum on care and treatment. The revised materials include a facilitator's guide, a participant's handbook, and a course workbook. The curriculum is accompanied by a training of trainers (TOT) training package, which I-TECH has been helping to deliver to partner trainers who provide HIV and AIDS care and treatment. In addition, I-TECH has collaborated with the National Tuberculosis and Leprosy Program (NTLP), the NACP, the World Health Organization (WHO), Columbia University, PATH, and other United States government care and treatment partners to produce a national policy on TB/HIV, a revised and enhanced TB/HIV in-service curriculum, and an operations manual on TB/HIV. I-TECH also assisted the NTLP to conduct a TOT on the TB/HIV curriculum; those trained are now working to roll out the curriculum nationwide.
Engaging in Provider-initiated Testing and Counselling (PITC). To support scale up of HIV prevention, care, support, and treatment, Tanzania has adopted the PITC strategy. I-TECH is working with NACP in the Morogoro Region to increase health care workers' capacity to provide PICT. This includes:
- Raising awareness about PITC among stakeholders in the Morogoro Region.
- Building regional and district training teams to train health care workers on PITC.
- Building the capacity of regional officials to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness and quality of the PITC training and services.
Reducing Stigma and Discrimination among Tanzania Health Care Workers. I-TECH produced a documentary film entitled Tuvunje Ukimya (Let Us Break the Silence) and an accompanying facilitator's guide. The film features five HIV-infected health care workers describing how they are living positively, confronting stigma and discrimination, working with their institutions to establish support groups, and continuing to support their families. The video was developed for the MOHSW and its affiliated training partners to motivate health care workers to get tested for HIV and to use HIV services, as well as to reduce stigma in the workplace. It is used in pre-service and in-service trainings of health care workers nationwide and has been incorporated into the Workplace Intervention Program training. Further, the film was screened at the 2008 Zanzibar International Film Festival.
