DAPP and MoH use TCE to control HIV pandemic

DAPP Zambia has partnered with the Ministry of Health Lusaka, Southern, Western and Eastern Province Health Offices to control the spread of HIV/AIDS using the Total Control of the Epidemic (TCE) method.

The TCE approach empowers people at-risk to take control of their own health, make informed decisions to reduce their vulnerability to HIV/AIDS, and decide for adherence.

Through a combination of tailor-made HIV services, people are notifying their partners of their HIV infection and partners are testing. Field officers and Community Health Workers on the other hand visit PLHIV, who fell out of treatment to re-engage them and form adherence support groups of trio of buddies. They offer testing in work places.

This bottom-up approach – when combined with high quality services at clinic level has proven to be a powerful model to help Zambia move towards the global 95-95-95 targets of no new infections and everyone on treatment to eliminate onwards infection. This is the full HIV treatment cascade.

474 TCE Field officers (psycho-social counsellors) and 20 Community Health Workers (CHWs) are the back bone of the program. They work-out from each health facility, together with the community to achieve control of the epidemic.

The program which that started in 2019 works in 247 health facilities in 18 districts of Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) supported provinces of Eastern, Lusaka, Southern and Western provinces of Zambia.