Old Naledi Clinic pilots chronic drugs doorstep delivery
Thandiwe Moyo | Friday June 14, 2019 13:25
The system includes delivering high blood pressure, diabetes along with ARV medications at the patients’ doorstep.
Greater Gaborone health management team chief medical officer, Dr Godfrey Simoonga said the clinic embarked on a project to deliver ARV and other chronic illness medication refills at the doorsteps of stable patients faithful to their treatment.
“This pilot project was initiated after we realised that some patients living with HIV and other chronic illnesses such as diabetes and high blood pressure are mostly given different dates for checkups and to refill their medication. We decided to combine the dates and give our patients their medication at the same time. However, we asked our patients if they would like for us to deliver their medications at their doorsteps and those who agree we deliver their refills at home,” he said.
Simoonga explained that this pilot project saves time and also decongests the human traffic at health facilities. He added that the same project would be piloted at the Nkoyaphiri Clinic by the beginning of next month. He explained that the high number of patients who have enrolled for HAART overwhelms the clinic. Currently, Nkoyaphiri Clinic has about 7,000 patients.
Even though it dispenses its ARV treatment on a daily basis, it is evident that a number of patients, who suffer from chronic illnesses and need medical attention, overwhelm the clinic.
“If this pilot programme bears fruit, we would surely like to spread it to other clinics in the country,” he said.
On a daily basis Old Naledi Clinic dispenses ARVs to about 90 patients. The new project targets to reduce the number to at least 60 per day. ARV medication would be prepackaged and taken to the patients’ homes or at work within their area.
We have seen countries such as Malawi, Tanzania, Ghana and others successfully delivering ARV medication refills at the doorsteps of their patients.
As one of the first countries to make HIV treatment available to its public health sector, Botswana made significant progress by having 84% of people living with the virus accessing treatment in 2017.
Along with this good progress came challenges that have seen clinics congested as the number of patients taking ARVs increased over the years. The pilot programme was introduced to address the challenge.