Increasing Access to HIV Care and Treatment for Children and their Families (UNICEF)

Overview

Under this agreement, UNICEF provided funding to expand HIV services to four additional districts in Cabo Delgado, and while these districts were eventually included in EGPAF’s flagship Project HEART program, UNICEF continued to provide integrated technical support tailored to the needs of the province. Activities implemented with UNICEF funds focused on building capacity within the Provincial Health Directorate (DPS) to both manage and scale up clinical services, with particular emphasis on prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) and pediatric care and treatment services.

EGPAF strengthened nutritional and psychosocial support for HIV-infected children and their caregivers through technical support and training at the site and district levels. Once HIV services in Cabo Delgado also were funded by PEPFAR, UNICEF continued to fund certain distinct activities with the following specific objectives:

• Improving follow-up of HIV-exposed and HIV-infected infants and young children;
• Improving access to quality HIV care and treatment services for HIV-infected infants and children;
• Improving access to psychosocial support for children in care and treatment and their caregivers.

By project end, the results of supported services in Cabo Delgado included:

• The cumulative number of patients enrolled in care since the beginning of the program is 20,507, of which 1,274 were children (6.2%);
• A total of 7,907 persons initiated antiretroviral therapy (ART), of which 460 (5.8%) were children;
• In the 11 health facilities where EGPAF supported PMTCT services, a total of 337,176 pregnant women were counseled in antenatal care and of those 261,181 (77.5%) were tested.