The Sunday Mail
Shamiso Yikoniko
Ten neighbours from the same village, all of them living with HIV and stable patients on anti-retroviral therapy (ART), take turns to collect their medicine.
Every month, one of them goes to Venice Clinic to collect the group’s pills. This is the essence of the Community ART Refill Groups (CARGs), a simple, economical initiative benefiting both health workers and members of the group. Sixty-five year-old Mrs Emma Chiriri, affectionately known as Sisi Emma, the CARG leader in Venice Farm of Mhondoro-Ngezi district, applauded the model.
“Being part of a CARG grouping has improved my life because now I’m able to cope better with HIV through sharing our successes and challenges as people living with HIV. Through CARG, we have also managed to fight stigma and discrimination in our community. Awareness campaigns help members of our community to understand that HIV is just like any other disease,” said Sisi Emma.”
Government has made strides in the fight against HIV and AIDS, which has seen the country reducing HIV prevalence rate from as high as 27 percent to 15 percent.
Although efforts have been made in HIV prevention, Zimbabwe has had its fair share of challenges, chief among them being a lackadaisical follow up on HIV clients. As a result, there have been cases of ART defaulting. However, the aforementioned challenges are soon to become a thing of the past with the adaptation of CARGs.
When CARGs were introduced, the overall goal was to reduce the burden and challenges for both health care workers and patients in the provision and receipt of ART and improving adherence and retention in care and treatment. Moreover, CARGs are also addressing issues of stigma and discrimination; improving patient retention as well as increasing male involvement in accessing health care.
The CARG model supports self-formed groups of clients, who are stable in accessing ART. Members of the groups usually come from the same geographical area.
Improved adherence
Avoiding treatment, interruptions or discontinuations are the main challenges facing the country’s HIV response. Lack of the means to travel to health centres has been cited as fuelling non-adherence in Zimbabwe. The aim of CARGs is to improve the retention of patients on anti-retroviral drugs.
According to the National AIDS Council annual report (2015), on national scale, retention has increased from 78 percent to 85 percent after 12 months among adults.
“We’re no longer defaulting because CARGs have given us an opportunity to monitor each other through the peer to peer counseling,” said Sisi Emma.
“And through CARGs, we are now able to cut on transport costs as we now contribute a minimal fee to cater for one person to collect drugs for ten people.”
Even Mhondoro-Ngezi District AIDS Co-ordinator, Mr Vakai Matutu attested that the defaulting rate has decreased in their district.
“CARGs have seen a decrease in the defaulting rate, from 10 percent to approximately 2 percent. In addition, CARGs have also seen an increase in male involvement in HIV care and treatment. Men naturally haven’t embraced health seeking behaviour and it becomes worse when the subject of HIV is brought up,” explained Sisi Emma.
“With CARGs, we are seeing more men coming up to receive HIV care and treatment. Though I can’t tell the numbers of men in our district, our CARG group has a compliment of four men against six women.”
Nationwide, male involvement in HIV and AIDS programmes stands at less than 30 percent. Couples are a population at risk of HIV infection, thus male involvement is essential for reducing the risk of HIV infections, both for couples and their unborn children.
