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Home Based Care Programme


Home Based Care (HBC) is at the heart of the services we provide to the communities of Umdoni and Vulamehlo.

In these very rural communities, there are many people who are sick and dying in remote huts in the hillsides, who have no access to medical support.

In order to help these people die in dignity, and in some cases enable them to sustain life through receiving medication, UVHAA have to date established 3 teams of medical health care workers who visit the sick and dying in their homes and administer medical aid and community support.

This takes the form of testing people for HIV and TB, educating family and community members as to how to provide home based care for the sick, including bereavement counselling, providing access to ARV (anti retro-viral) medication, delivering food parcels, supplying blankets and clothes, and referring those in need to other services for further assistance. We also learn daily of children who have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS, record their details, and register them for our Child Headed Families and other relevant programmes.

We started this programme in November 2005 due to the inability of Government Health services to reach rural people in need within our Municipality, and high level of denial of HIV amongst community members.

Without the financial support of Crusaid UK, our HBC programme would not function. Since 2004, they have funded this programme, enabling UVHAA to purchase 2 vehicles capable of traversing the difficult dirt roads in the distant hillsides, and enabling us to employ the initial teams of healthcare workers.

Whilst these 2 vehicles daily go out into the hills, delivering care to those most in need, and compiling a database of new cases, which we encounter on every mission, in order to fully serve our communities, we would need 10 vehicles.

The significant cost of these extra vehicles and the teams of staff to man them mean that we remain in desperate need of further funding.

We work with and help to establish local support groups, and provide education and information with regard to positive living, which means living with the HIV virus. To date we have established 12 of these local support groups, and with further funding will need to establish at least a further 12.

We currently have 712 clients on our registers, 270 patients and 442 orphans and many vulnerable children.

Only 25-35 % can be visited on a monthly basis due to staff and transport constraints and many more cases are referred weekly.

With funding, we plan to establish a further 12 community support groups, and respond to the urgent need to expand the service we are offering to an additional five geographical areas.