Masters Degrees (African Centre for HIV/AIDS Management)

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Browsing Masters Degrees (African Centre for HIV/AIDS Management) by Subject "Africa Centre for HIVAIDS Management"

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    The role of a formal treatment support partnership between community based organisations (CBO) and a company in levels of adherence of emplyees on anti-retoviral treatment.
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2012-03) Mbokazi, Welcome; Augustyn, J. C. D.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. Dept. of Industrial Psychology. Africa Centre for HIV/AIDS Management.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The advent of antiretroviral therapy (ART), especially highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), has brought about more than just a gleamer of hope, but a reasonable degree of hope and objective reality that antiretroviral therapy can prevent (for a reasonable period of time in some situations) progression of HIV to AIDS. This positive development, has not just come without its own fair share of challenges. One of the major challenges of ARTherapy, is that once a person starts using them, there is no choice of either, one may decide to use them for the short term and just fill better and stop using them, or use them for a reasonably longer period of time and then take some breaks between certain intervals. ARTherapy is meant to be taken for an individual’s life time, which may at certain circumstances and mostly be measured in terms of decades, and this in it’s own is a major problem, both financialy and healthwise. Taking into consideration the foregoing scenario, the researcher undertook to conduct a discriptive quantitative study. It was assumed that companies have HIV/AIDS workplace policies, which allows and encourage them to take care for their employees health care need, and in so doing, they may enter into partnerships, with relevant stakeholders like Community Based Organisations (CBOs) and Primary Health Care Institutions (PHCIs) in particular. The envisaged partnership between these key stakeholders, was then seen as an important factor in increasing or maintaining higher levels of adherence in employees on Antiretroviral (ART) treatment. Therefore, the stated research hypothesis was: A formal treatment support partnership between community based organisation (CBO) and a company increase levels of adherence in employees on anti-retroviral treatment. The study found that, employees on treatment understand the reason why they were offered treatment uptake support, which may mean that, they understand the importance of having treatment support and having access to such in order to maintain higher levels of adherence. The study further found that the majority of participants never missed their treatment doses, whilst having a treatment uptake supporter. In a way this tells that, patients with treatment uptake support, is highly likely to maintain higher levels of adherence than the patient who does not have such support. The study also found that, a majority of participants showed knowledge, that their HIV/AIDS workplace policies have a clause which allow and encourage multi-sectoral partnerships for HIV/AIDS management. This study also found that, a critical number of participants strongly agreed that, indeed, it will be beneficial to have an established partnership between the Company, the Primary Health Care Institution (PHCI) and a CBO. An overwhelming number of participants, strongly supported or agreed to the notion that, efforts should be made to establish formal partnerships amongst relevant stakeholders. The major implication for this study is that, there is a need for future in-depth research to be conducted on this subject in order to reach necessary conclusions on the need as well as viable means of implementing a multi-sectoral approach (partnership) to HIV/AIDS management in the world of work and beyond.