Cellules, Senegal: prevention and support

Created in 1997, with the support of the Alliance’s linking organisation, the Alliance Nationale de Lutte Contre le Sida (ANCS) in Senegal, the Cellules are a new type of community-based association. The Cellules’ aim is to improve access to a comprehensive range of prevention, care and treatment services (medical and psychosocial) for people with HIV at regional and local level. The services provided by the Cellules are:

  • counselling
  • psychological care
  • material support, if needed
  • support groups
  • meetings between professionals and people living with HIV/AIDS
  • information, education and communication
  • referral services to people living with HIV/AIDS.

The uniqueness of the Cellules has been to improve and strengthen the collaboration of the various groups involved in providing prevention, care or treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS (including healthcare providers, social workers, health educators and people living with HIV/AIDS themselves). This collaboration has had many advantages. It has eased the referral processes between various sectors and enabled the provision of a comprehensive range of prevention, treatment and care services to people living with HIV/AIDS. In particular, the integration of prevention and treatment and care activities has been facilitated. Counselling, support groups and information, education and communication activities have been shown to be good opportunities for prevention activities to take place.

Looking to the future

However, despite a really good structure integrating care and treatment services, prevention efforts still need to be reinforced. The counselling provided by health workers is rather standard and not specifically adapted to the need of people living with HIV/AIDS, and a prevention strategy has yet to be specifically defined. The opportunities created by the collaboration between all the different services have also not yet been used to extend prevention efforts to the general public, or specific target groups. This could decrease the stigma which still proves to be a major deterrent to people living with HIV/AIDS accessing services and getting involved in the Cellules.