Action Aid Officer, Mushali outlining issues on the programme supported by Global Fund pic by Tione Andsen (Mana)
By Tione Andsen
Defaulter rate for Patients on Antiretroviral Treatment (ART) in Ntcheu is pegged at 40 per cent which is threatening the attainment of 90:90:90 HIV initiatives.
ART Coordinator for Ntcheu, Dave Muhasuwa disclosed this Friday at Masimale village in the area of Traditional Authority (TA) Kwataine during a joint review of TB and HIV Global Fund Programme.
He said over 53, 0000 patients were put on ART treatment only 32,000 were accessing the drugs from various outreach points in the district.
Muhasuwa said some patients are on treatment but they provided the health facilities with wrong addresses for their locations and it is making the follow visits very difficult.
He said the District Hospital has over 5,000 active patients accessing their medication on regularly basis.
“We are suspecting that some of the patients are from neigbouring villages from Mozambique and they just come to access the drugs and never made follow up visits. We are having problems to relocate them. We are intending to start using national identity cards to all patients accessing the drugs from all our outreach points,” the coordinator stated.
Muhasuwa said they are facing challenges in updating their data saying the system they are using easily break down which is making the district to continue having an updated HIV data at times.
“We are facing challenges that when some patients are moving out of Ntcheu, they don’t come to health facilities to ask for transfers for continuity which should enable us remove them from our district data base,” he observed.
He bemoaned lack of adequate laboratory technicians in blood testing section making the process difficult although Lighthouse and EDCAF were assisting in provision such services.
Muhasuwa said the district has 33 ART outreach points with four computerized centres which include the District Hospital, Sister Tereza Hopsital, Lizulu and Kasinje Health Centres.
Manet + Resource Mobilization and Advocacy Officer, Lyness Soko said HIV patients are always encouraged to stay health and administer their drugs on daily basis.
She said Malawi is among countries within United Nations which are implementing the 90:90:90 initiatives to combat HIV and AIDS.
“ARV are there to help reduce the spread of HIV among communities and it disheartening that some patients are defaulting which is put pressure to the attainment of the HIV initiative,” Soko added.
Action Aid Programme Officer, Kondwani Mushali said Action is working in Ntcheu with Episcopal Conference of Malawi (ECM), Manet + and Catholic Health Commission (CHC) to fight HIV and TB with the support of Global Fund.
He said the programme have been using Care groups and client experts in order to raise awareness among communities on the need to go for HIV and TB tests once they notice some strange signs in their bodies.
Ntcheu has a population of 659,608 with four support groups.