Care & Support

Availability and Quality of Care and Support Services

Care and Support being one of the important strategy of Avert Society, aims to mitigate the socio-economic and psychological impact of HIV on individuals, families, communities and society at large. NACO has envisaged having a continuum of care across comprehensive health care as a response to HIV epidemic. Avert Society is mandated to implement the activities at state level.

This strategy aims to:

1. To increase access to comprehensive Care & Support in the high prevalent and other districts for PLWHA.
2. Bring together People Living with HIV/AIDS and affected community under the umbrella of its care & support services.
3. Bring together the various organizations working with PLWHA under one umbrella to make the programme more effective.
4. Expand its reach & enhance the quality of services provided to PLWHAs.

Activities till date

• Support is provided to 8 NGOs to implement Community Care Centre activities like hospitalisation, counseling to PLWHAs and their family members, nutritional support, recreational facilities, clinical care and legal care under the community care centre programmes. These activities will scale up in the entire state in more districts of Maharashtra.
• Support is provided to 9 PLWHA networks to implement drop-in centre projects. The various services like counseling,community mobilization programmes, referrals and linkages, nutritional support, legal help are provided to PLWHAs and their family members. More networks will be initiated in future in different districts by Avert Society.
• Support is provided to 1 Home Based Care project.
• Support is provided through 3 Voluntary Counseling and Testing Centres (VCTC). To conduct activities like pre test and post test counseling, testing and diagnosis of HIV (Rapid Test) and awareness to access VCTC through community mobilization.
• The President of India His Highness (Dr. A. P. Kalam) visited the Avert supported institution – Bel-Air Hospital, Panchagani which manages a 30 bedded community care centre with the help of Avert Society since September 2002.

Future Activities:

• Scaling up existing care programmes in the State of Maharashtra.
• Developing Model Care Programmes.
• Initiating VCTC programmes and strengthening existing VCCTC in Maharashtra.