VCT Services
A Brief report on Out Reach VCT services with Chaitanya Sravanthi
Population Service International (PSI) in partnership with Chaitanya Sravanthi is providing Voluntary Counseling and Testing services for women at their door steps. The Women’s program plays a vital role for balancing gender control in HIV/AIDS field. The challenges of the epidemic are enormous, and we urgently need to increase the scale of VCT services to reduce the enormity of the problem. We are committed to reaching more people, in more areas, with more comprehensive responses through out reach sites. Women in Visakhapatnam are relegated to lower status than men, and their vulner-ability to HIV is increased as they are denied access to education, financial re-sources, health care and protection from violence. Women living with HIV face even greater stigma and discrimination than their male counterparts and are often left to fend for themselves. It is very appropriate that VCT services are provided more to women not only to protect their lives but also protect their families.
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Chaitanya sravanthi a voluntary organization started in the year 1987 with the objective of striving for the upliftment of the downtrodden, and empowerment of the women. Sri Chaitanaya Sravanthi is working for women empowerment in old town area. Around 5000 women come under this group. The group itself approached Dr. Shirin Rehman – wife of Ex VUDA Chairman and MLA who is the president and back bone of the orgnasiation for VCT ser-vices. Over the years, the empowerment function of Chaitanya sravanthi has become more dominant over
Why Out reach site
The idea was basically to reach out mainly to female clients spread out across a larger geographical area. Most female clients are unable to access static VCT services either due to mobility issues or in-ability to make independent decisions without their spouse’s consent. At the static sites, male clients usually come in alone to seek VCT services and then attempt to bring their partners at a later date. However, it has often been seen that most male clients are either reluctant to share their status or are unable to take time off from their daily job.
Main objectives of Out reach site:
=> To take VCT services to the community especially female clients for easy access.
=> To meet VCT demand from locally identified areas where partner organizations are based and where female clients can be approached for such services.
=> To promote Saadhan clinic services and supplement site figures. =* To reach remote areas where there is a need for the services. To overcome such issues and to make VCT more accessible to a larger female audience, we ap-proached Sri Chaitanya Sravanthi which is working directly with female clients and is one of the larg-est self-help women group in Visakhapatnam.
Steps needed to execute outreach VCT
We briefed about PSI Saadhan VCT protocols regarding strict confidentiality and anonymity about their test status and the voluntary nature of the VCT program to Dr. Shirin Rehman before starting the VCT activities. She personally visited our center and saw for herself the quality of the VCT services being rendered. Her comments ― Properly well maintained, very good team and doing good job, which is need of the hour ‖ One of our intentions to approach self-help groups is to promote the importance for VCT programs. Chaitanya Sravanthi, has their own staff trained in HIV/AIDS awareness programs by Green Vision. They are creating HIV/AIDS awareness and motivating them to avail counseling and testing services within their target groups. We establish understanding to co-operate, and coordinate on the matter of referring clients who want to get them counseled and tested for HIV to the Saadhan VCT clinics and Saadhan clinics to provide services at the subsidized rate mutually agreed by both parties. To promote VCT services, certain dates in a month are fixed. Usually 2 days a month for Chaitanya Sravanthi. The organization in turn helps promote or create awareness of the services within the tar-get group. After the talks by Asst. Mgr VCTC & APM we inaugurated the outreach site in old post office area community hall.
|l PSI – Saadhan Clinic offers the following services: =* Manpower to execute the VCT Outreach. =* Usually 2 female counselors and a lab tech make up the outreach team. =* Test kits and all other consumables =* Linkage or
Chaitanya Sravanthi offers the following => Space =* Community mobilization =* Post Test Services
The inaugural program was attended by Mr. G.K.V.Ravi Chandra, Project Manager of PSI and Dr. Shirin Rehman, President of Sri Chaitanya Sravanthi, Dr. Rajendra Prasad – Addl. DM & HO, Dr. Prabhakar Director of Green Vision
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Out reach site will be shifted each time according to the requirement of the situation so as to reach the inner most pockets of the slum. The observations at the community level:
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PSI Project Manager – G.K.V.Ravi Chandra addressing on inauguration Chaitanya Sravanthi Founder Dr. Shirin Rehman addressing |
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Dr. P. Rajendra Prasad DM & HO addressing Dr. Raj Sekhar— VCT Manager—AP of Lepra India |
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Women attended for the inauguration program at Chaitanya Sravanthi |
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