Uganda AIDS Commission - Thank you for the invitation

Scaling Up Through Partnerships: Overcoming Obstacles to Implementation

“The HIV Implementers conference has set June’s meeting in Kampala to help partners:

- exchange lessons learned and best practices in the scale-up of HIV/AIDS programs

- focus on building the capacity of local prevention, treatment, and care programs

- enhancing quality

- promote coordination among partners.

Dialogue about future directions of HIV/AIDS programs, with a strong emphasis on:

- implementation best practices, and

- the identification of critical barriers”.

Hope Clinic Lukuli is an example of partnerships between: a CBO that became an NGO; local village and city councils; the national Ministry of Health; Ugandan and international companies; and Uganda and international health NGO and development agencies. We say thank you to Patrick Mutabwire and Elizabeth Mushabe who were willing to hear about Hope Clinic's work and agreed that we were a valuable example for the conference to learn about.

Scaling up of health services must be a balance between huge and under-served demand among the community and the technical, human and financial capacity of the health service point that the community relies upon. Hope Clinic developed a network of implementation partners to gradually expand the clinic’s in-house services and to serve the community through collaborations until it was technically and financially capable itself. The financial capacity includes fees from out-patients, sponsorship of health services by Ugandan companies and using community resources to equip and improve the clinic.

Building capacity has also been a coordinated effort to ensure that best practices are adopted and partnerships provide training and mentoring to health providers and peer educators as well as the service for the client. Hope Clinic Lukuli is a general practice health facility encompassing:

- childhood illnesses, especially fevers and other causes of dehydration;

- maternity care including RH, FP, ANC and deliveries and neo-natal care;

- out-patients consultations, laboratory examinations and treatment;

- comprehensive and integrated HIV services from mobilisation and testing to ARV.

The community served by Hope Clinic requires broad medical services and the capacity of Hope Clinic had to be steadily built to address their needs – no government staffed site exists within 3km of Hope Clinic and yet close to 100,000 people reside in that area. The good relationship that the clinic has built with the community and popular opinion leaders means that we are trusted for quality and genuine interest in people’s wellbeing. Using an established CBO/ NGO is the simplest way to scale up HIV service delivery.

The scaling up through partnerships has been the means to build our specific capacity for HIV services. The incremental growth of HIV services has relied on identifying the partner with the best practices, engaging them to recognise that the Hope Clinic and its community needs their services and negotiating the mechanism for an implementation partnership.

Hope Clinic is the most integrated example of PEPFAR, Global Fund, Private Sector and community at a single site. Yet we are a highly transferable example of how to remove the barriers and support Prevention efforts. Call or Email to learn what we did.

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