All Council Clinics to Offer TB Treatment, HIV Testing. 15/10/10
Starting from next year we are decentralising
15 October 2010
Harare — All Harare City Council clinics will offer tuberculosis treatment and HIV counselling and testing services from January next year.
Presently TB treatment is confined to two sites. Harare City health director (administration) Dr Prosper Chonzi on Wednesday said the changes were part of council's efforts to harmonise response to the two diseases.
"What used to happen in opportunistic infections clinics is that people who tested HIV positive would only be initiated on anti-retroviral drugs and referred to either Wilkins or Beatrice (Infectious Disease) hospitals for TB screening," Dr Chonzi said.
TB management formerly entailed patients collecting medicines from clinics but still going to Wilkins or Beatrice every two months for assessment by a doctor.
Dr Chonzi said the rollout had been preceded by a successful pilot project at Mabvuku Polyclinic. "We have been monitoring our two infectious disease hospitals and we observed that TB patients were coming in large numbers and some of them were failing to get treatment because they don't have money for bus fare.
"We, therefore, decided to carry out a pilot project and it was a success, so starting from next year we are decentralising," Dr Chonzi said.