Team PATA

PATA Programmes - PATA/S2S Toolkit

The Adaption and Production of a Paediatric HIV Care and Treatment Toolkit for African Healthcare Workers

In response to the need for an easy to use toolkit for healthcare workers in South Africa, South to South Partnership for Comprehensive Family HIV Care & Treatment Program developed a comprehensive toolkit for teams in health care facilities in South Africa. This toolkit is a useful collection of job aides, reference guides and decision-making tools specially designed to assist and empower multidisciplinary HIV care teams providing quality services to children and their families

In June 2011 PATA began working with South to South to develop the toolkit so that it can be used across Sub-Saharan Africa. Working with Zoë-Life, the International Children’s Palliative Care Network and other PATA mentors and partners, the toolkit was adapted and expanded. Some of the changes include:

• Adapting the Toolkit to WHO guidelines and changing South Africa specific references and drugs
• Including a section on Opportunistic Infections- TB and Malaria.
• A palliative care section with tools for pain management
• Expanding the psychosocial section to include the child friendly clinician poster developed by PATA, a section on adolescent care and working with adolescents and a more comprehensive disclosure to children guide.
• An easy to use story book (talk tool) was included to be used with children and adults.

The Toolkit was launched at the 2011 PATA Pan-African Summit, Dr Elke Maritz and Nombulelo Matshikwe from South to South presented a masterclasses on the new toolkit titled ‘Paediatric HIV care and treatment – A toolkit for multidisciplinary healthcare teams’.

The masterclass included a case study which teams worked through so that they could get a feel for the systematic approach offered in the toolkit.

The teams lauded the toolkit as a resource that should become the new “Standard of Care” in Africa. The toolkit takes into account the challenges that they are facing from the district to the community level. The comprehensive way that the toolkit covers the correct paediatric drug usage and dosing was especially appreciated. They found the focus on breastfeeding within the nutrition section useful considering the need among many African countries to respect their own traditions.

Thanks to the joint efforts of South To South, PATA, ICPCN and Zoë-Life in creating this toolkit. The toolkit will be disseminated through PATA local and regional forums over the next few years. The ring-bound format is designed to encourage local adaptation, reproduction where feasible and easy, low-cost future updating as new resources become available.

Click here to download the toolkit