India: care and support
As the number of people living with HIV in India continues to grow, greater priority must be given to their care, support and treatment needs – including strengthening family and community care, providing psychosocial and other support to individuals, and ensuring accessible and affordable treatment services.
The Alliance in India believes that involving communities in care and support can play a key role in encouraging the uptake of public sector treatment services. When linked to prevention initiatives, such involvement can positively affect stigma, discrimination and poverty, and help to control the spread of the epidemic.
Since 2000, the Alliance has been an innovator in fostering the development of community-driven approaches to care and support for people living with HIV in India – with the first home and community-based care and support programme (initially supported by the European Union, and then by the Abbott Fund in Delhi, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh states).
As of 2007, the programme had reached 60,375 people affected by HIV, including 17,393 people living with HIV, 23,790 families and 19,193 children affected by HIV and AIDS.
Key components of the programme include
- facilitating access to health care (prevention and treatment)
- providing supplementary nutrition and health information
- assisting and empowering communities to establish support groups (primarily, but not exclusively, for people living with HIV)
- providing psychosocial support for children and family members affected by HIV
- access to credit and skills development
- access to formal and informal education, with vocational skills-based training for older children
- economic support to children orphaned by AIDS.
The success of the care and support programme was instrumental in the selection of the Alliance as a principal recipient for Round 6 of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS Tuberculosis and Malaria – only the second such partnership in India. Now an integral part of India’s National AIDS Control Programme-III, the CHAHA project (meaning ‘a wish’ in Hindi) focuses on extending care and support to children and families living with and affected by HIV – especially single parent families.
The CHAHA project started in June 2007 and is being implemented by eight sub-recipients and their 59 implementing non-governmental partners – working across 40 districts in four high prevalence states (Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur and Tamil Nadu). The sub-recipients include all five of Alliance India’s linking organisations plus its state partner, SASO, along with Catholic Relief Services and Plan India.
Over the next five years, the Alliance aims to reach at least 64,000 children living with and affected by HIV, using the programme as a mechanism to help children remain with their parents or extended families.
