Reinforcing the Scaling Up of HIV Services: Strengthening HIV Prevention and Effective Targeting

Program goal: To reduce new HIV infections and deaths among men, women, children and neonates in the next 3 years

Strategies:

Ensure and scale up HIV care and prevention efforts in four high priority regions which have 58% of the country’s population, and where HIV prevalence is more than twice the national figure. These regions also include 75% of people living with HIV in Ghana as a whole. The four regions also contain the hot spots for female sex workers and men who have sex with men;
Include Option B+ for pregnant women in 2015;
Increase co-ordination and implementation of TB and HIV collaborative activities; and
Strengthen data quality assurance at facility, district and regional levels.

Planned activities:

Provide Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) for 61,870 people based on CD4 ≤350 to CD4≤500 in 2015; except for TB/HIV and discordant couples, expectant mothers and their infants, and those eligible for treatment under WHO 2013 treatment guidelines, who will be enrolled at CD4≤500;
Scale up HIV testing and counseling with a special focus on couples, key populations, and increased male involvement in high prevalence regions;
Ensure Option B+ and Early Infant Diagnosis: Create new PMTCT sites in high prevalence areas; enroll into Option B+ (provision of ARVs for life to HIV positive mothers); and provide virological tests, ARV prophylaxis and co-trimoxazole to HIV-exposed infants;
Ensure TB and HIV collaborative activities: Create 50 new TB/HIV sites providing test kits, ARVs and CTX; screen all PLHIV enrolled on treatment twice in a year; integrate service supervision for jointly planned activities for TB/HIV; and gene Xpert tests to confirm TB in ART clinics in high burden districts; and
Strengthen DHMIS2 and M&E.

Target Group/Beneficiaries: