SAfAIDS Zimbabwe with support from Aidsfonds is providing support to Ministry of Health and Child Care in the national roll out of pediatric dolutegravir (pDTG). The program, at national level is supporting capacity building of health workers on pediatric dolutegravir with the objective to increase service provider knowledge and confidence in dispensing the medicine. At local level, SAfAIDS is supporting transitioning of children to pDTG in Bulawayo City through community health workers who conduct follow-ups for referral and adherence support. The community health workers also play a critical role by providing support to caregivers during the transitioning process.
Ministry of Health and Child care with support from CHAI and UNTAID piloted pDTG in t13 learning sites across Zimbabwe and is now in the process of national rollout. This requires support to reach frontline health workers with training on the medicines and administration guidelines. Additionally, caregivers of children needing transitioning to pDTG also require product knowledge and ongoing support to build confidence in the new medicine. As such SAfAIDS is supporting training of health workers and community health workers on pDTG for strengthening of knowledge and product confidence to secure positive outcomes for children transitioning to pDTG. A critical component of the pDTG intervention is the documentation of care giver experiences with pDTG, as such SAfAIDS through trained community cadres is tracking children and their caregivers through the transitioning process to facilitate documentation of the various experiences. SAfAIDS will document the experiences of caregivers with pDTG drug and the transitioning process.
