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Care and Support

Four boys posing for a picture in Jodhpur, India
Four boys at the SOS Children's Village in Vishakhapatnum, India. SOS Children's Villages focuses on family-based, long-term care of children who can no loner grow up with their biological familes. They offer various forms of support to strengthen and stablize familes as much as possible so that they can once again manage their lives independently and care for their children.

Did You Know?

AIDSTAR-One has identified and documented lessons from promising programs about how to integrate multiple gender strategies into HIV/AIDS programs in Integrating Multiple Gender Strategies to Improve HIV and AIDS Interventions: A Compendium of Programs in Africa.

Know of a program that integrates gender into HIV programming for most at risk populations? Tell us more....

Access to integrated care and support (C&S) services is extremely important for people living with HIV (PLWH) and their families. Comprehensive C&S programming helps PLWH improve their overall well-being by working with health providers, family members, and the community to stabilize health, treat opportunistic infections and other illnesses, provide nutritional support, improve the safety of drinking water, and offer psychosocial and spiritual support, among other services.

As more and more PLWH start antiretroviral treatment and health outcomes improve, the need for C&S services also grows. To increase access to and use of C&S services, AIDSTAR-One advances good and promising programmatic practices in C&S by:

  • Serving as a leading resource for USAID, PEPFAR, other U.S. Government agencies, and partners by providing a platform for global technical leadership and knowledge management in mental health, C&S integration, and evaluation.
  • Providing support to strengthen the programmatic content, quality, and sustainability of service delivery. Examples include assessments of the supply chain for the antibacterial cotrimoxazole and of program-based C&S monitoring and evaluation activities; development of adaptable training materials to improve water safety, hygiene, and sanitation in facility-based C&S programs; and support for expanding palliative care activities in sub-Saharan Africa.
  • Providing technical assistance to bring programs to scale and to strengthen programs based on local conditions.