The Reviewed and
Revised Compendium of Christian Projects
Addressing the Diseases
of Poverty: HIV/AIDS, Malaria, and TB
SANRU III Project (HIV/AIDS Component)
Project/Program
Name: SANRU III Project (HIV/AIDS Component)
COUNTRY: Democratic Republic of
Congo
Church or denomination: Interchurch Medical
Assistance, Inc. (I.M.A.) is non-profit association of twelve Protestant relief
and development agencies that represent a constituency of churches in American
and throughout the world. The Eglise du Christ au Congo (ECC), IMA’s partner in
the SANRU III project, comprises 61 Protestant church communities of several
denominations representing millions of parishioners in the Democratic Republic
of Congo.
Project summary: HIV/AIDS interventions are featured in the
5-year SANRU III project in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that
Interchurch Medical Assistance (IMA) launched in 2001 in partnership with the
Eglise du Christ au Congo (ECC), with funding from the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID). IMA and ECC receive assistance from several
Congolese and American organizations to address the health needs of DRC, in
addition to the assistance from USAID.
For the past few years, ECC has been very concerned
with the increase of HIV infection within the Congolese population. ECC had
participated in a number of workshops in order to identify the role and the
place of the church in the fight against AIDS.
With responsibility for more than 50 hospitals, ECC
is addressing challenging problems like security for transfusion and the lack
of medicines to manage AIDS cases.
ECC has collaborated with the Ministry of Health and
others churches including the Catholic church, the Salvation Army and
Kimbanguists as well as other partners in several workshops organized under the
technical guiding of the material program for AIDS (PNLS) and the national
center for transfusion (CNTS).
Background/ History: For almost forty years, IMA
has procured and distributed medicines and medical supplies for international
health care programs that serve people in need without regard to ethnicity,
creed, color, gender, national origin, religious or political affiliation. Other
sectors of ministry include international disease control programs and
strengthening of health care systems, working in collaboration with
governmental, non-governmental and corporate partners.
The Eglise du Christ au Congo, the SANRU III
implementing partner in D.R. Congo, unites the majority of Protestant
congregations there. In its health work, it works closely with other faith
networks (Catholic, Kimbanguist) and secular organizations as well as with
government health authorities. ECC was the implementing partner in the widely
acclaimed SANRU I & II rural health projects from 1981 to 1992, with
support from USAID. After USAID withdrew support to its programs in Zaire/Congo
due to civil unrest, ECC was able to continue its exemplary work in primary
health care with assistance from several donors in the 1990’s.
The sero-prevalence of HIV/AIDS among adults in the
Democratic Republic of Congo in 2002 was estimated by UNAIDS as being 4.9%; D.R.
Congo has one of the largest populations of people affected by the disease in
the world. UNAIDS also reports that there are approximately 1.3 million
HIV/AIDS infected people and 930,000 AIDS orphans in D.R. Congo. With all the
socio-politico-economical problems that the country is facing the need for
strong action is urgent and must be generalized.
Before 2001, more than 50% of ECC hospitals did not
have tests for HIV and used to make untested transfusions.
Goals: SANRU III is working with existing organizations
and independently to restore a behavior-changing understanding of AIDS in rural
areas.
Objectives: SANRU III works through
health institutions, schools and churches to educate the population. Health
institutions will be trained in how to run programs to effectively diagnose,
treat and counsel people with sexually transmitted infections (STIs). SANRU
will provide HIV test kits and condoms to support these programs.
SANRU III’s Year 2 Plan includes training of community
educators for active sensitization of communities. The educators will deliver
12-15 messages as part of an integrated community-based awareness raising
program dealing with behavior change for the following list of problems:
§
Malaria
§
HIV/AIDS
and sexually transmitted infections
§
Diarrhea
disease
§
Immunizations
through Essential Program for Immunization (EPI)
§
Nutrition
§
TB
prevention
§
Hygiene,
water, and sanitation projects
§
Antenatal
clinics
Who does the work? SANRU III is convinced that
the most important way of reducing the problem is to work through and with the
community using community members to transfer education messages and secondly through
health personnel in health centers and the hospital.
Main activities:
1)
Related to improving security with transfusion:
§
Train
4-5 labs per health zone
§
Provide
labs with test kits for HIV/and other tests
§
Make
sure the blood to be transfused is tested
§
Provide
the 4-5 sites with appropriate refrigerators
§
Identify
donor group
2)
Related to the reduction of horizontal transmission of the virus:
§
Train
personnel in management of STIs
§
Provide
health zones with STI meds
§
Treat
STIs in difficult to access sites
§
Identify
and train peers educators
§
Organize
focus groups weekly for each peer group
§
Distribute
condoms to high risk groups through peers and community educators
3)
Related to the reduction of vertical transmission:
§
Train
5 individuals per health zone in training of trainers (TOT) and in counseling
§
Provide
sites with tests for prenatal clinics to measure prevalence
§
Provide
health zones with Neviropine to prevent mother to child transmission
§
Treat
pregnant women with HIV and AIDS with Neviropine
§
Train
community educators
§
Supervise
related activities
Expected outcomes: We
are expecting increases in the following indicators:
§
Percentage of health institutions with HIV tests
§
Number of patients whose blood is screened for HIV
§
Number of the patients treated for sexually transmitted infections
§
Number of condoms distributed
§
Number of nurses trained in diagnosis and treatment of STIs
§
Percentage of mothers with children age 0-23 months who cite at
least two known ways of reducing the risk of HIV infection
§
Number
of peers educators trained
§
Number
of focus groups held
§
Number
of personnel trained in preventing mother to child transmission
§
Number
of women treated with Neviropine
§
Number
of community educators involved
Results:
·
SANRU
has distributed 65,000 HIV tests (2001)
·
More
than 90% of blood given for transfusion in SANRU health facilities were tested
(2001)
·
1,300
nurses have been trained in HIV/AIDS prevention (just training)
Lesson learned:
1.
There
was some difficulty encountered in using “Determine” tests, so the project is
developing a printed a booklet and training course for users
2.
Tests
should be free of charge
3.
We
do not necessarily need to test women during prenatal clinic if Neviropine is not
available
Funding and other resources: Support has been provided
for this initiative by USAID. We are seeking additional contributions.
Further readings or
documents:
Additional information on the SANRU program is available at
http://www.sanru.org. The ECC website is http://ecc.faithweb.com.
Contact
information:
SANRU 3
75, Av. de la
Justice/Kinshasa-Gombe
B.P. 4938 Kinshasa I
Fax: 002243-12-34482
Dr. Léon Ngoma Miezi
Kintaudi, Director SANRU
Dr. Félix Minuku, Technical Coordinator
Also:
Interchurch
Medical Assistance (I.M.A.)
P.O. Box 429
New Windsor
MD 21776
Telephone:
410-635-8720
Fax: 410-635-8726
E-mail: imainfo@interchurch.org
Web
site: www.interchurch.org; www.sanru.org