Witkoppen Health and Welfare Centre hosts community feedback session

The fight against HIV/Aids is vital, especially when it comes to ensuring that the youth are healthy and have a chance to reach their dreams.

On 15 February the Witkoppen Health and Welfare Centre hosted a community feedback session and dissemination event to inform the community about the research which had been conducted as part of the Dreams Innovation Challenge (Dreams IC) at the clinic over the past two years. The Dreams IC is a partnership funded by the United States Department of State and managed by the JSI Research and Training Institute and is aimed at reducing the spread of HIV/Aids among adolescent girls and young women in sub-Saharan Africa.

“Women, especially young women, have a higher HIV prevalence than men,” explained Lilian Ngwako, the research data manager at Witkoppen, during her presentation on the day.

“In the last year, only 44 per cent of men [studied for research purposes] visited a clinic or hospital [to get their HIV status tested] compared to 70 per cent of women. The men were, however, willing to be tested in the comfort of their own homes.”

It, therefore, became clear to researchers and healthcare practitioners that in order to keep adolescent girls and young women HIV-free, their male partners would need to be brought into the fold.

• To do this, the Dreams IC programme focused on three interventions for patients in the community in which the centre serves:
• The secondary distribution of HIV self- test kits: this is when adolescent girls and young women who are HIV negative were invited to distribute self-testing kits to their male sexual partners so that the men could learn about their own status
• Linkage of men to care: after the male partners had used the self-test kits, they could be linked to care at the Mvuselelo Male-Friendly Clinic, which is located on the Witkoppen grounds and is catered specifically to the health needs of men
• Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) provided to adolescent girls and young women: this is an anti-retroviral treatment available to women and girls who have a high risk of contracting HIV or have male partners who are already HIV positive.

The interventions were put in place over a two-year period and involved 2 200 sexually active adolescent girls (aged between 16–19) and young women (aged between 20–24) from Diepsloot which aimed to stop the spread of HIV among the youth.

“We worked closely with the Witkoppen Youth Advisory Board [on the Dreams IC work done at Witkoppen and with the Diepsloot community],” Ngwako told the Fourways Review.

“They are a group of young people from Diepsloot who we speak to and ask questions so that we can design programmes around the youth’s needs.”

Members of the 15-person board were present for the feedback session and put on a dramatic presentation about the interventions and Diepsloot’s youths experience of them. The event at the Diepsloot Youth Centre in Ext 2 was catered by a local company and opened with a prayer from a local pastor. The Mvuselelo Male-Friendly Clinic is within the Witkoppen Health and Welfare Centre on William Nicol Drive and is open Monday to Friday from 7.30am to 4 pm.

Related article: 

https://www.citizen.co.za/fourways-review/video_of_the_day/joburgtoday-sa-men-reluctant-get-tested-hiv/

https://www.citizen.co.za/fourways-review/video_of_the_day/joburgtoday-hiv-denialism-setback-prof-sanne/