Challenges Facing Home Based Care Projects on HIV/AIDS Management in Africa

Abstract

HIV/AIDS has continued to pose a major challenge to the social-economical development of Africa since the infection was first diagnosed in Kenya in 1984.  All the sectors of the African economy have been negatively affected by the epidemic as exemplified by rising numbers of orphans and vulnerable children and currently estimated 2.4 million loss of household goods, reduction of labor and thus productivity.  As a result, several NGO'S have come up with Home Based Care programmes to care for the affected and the infected.  Irrespective of the objectives set by these home based care programmes, members that are less privileged in the community and in the country are still languishing in untold suffering, they live in abject poverty.  The objective of the study was to establish the challenges of Home Based care projects in HIV/ Aids management in Africa.  The specific objectives included: establishing how project monitoring and evaluation affected home based care projects, determining the effects of funding policies, assessing how training of human resources influenced home based care projects and finding out how advocacy initiative and community mobilization affected home based care project in HIV/Aids management in Africa. Descriptive research design was used to carry out an in-depth study of the various NGOS in order to come with relevant findings. The study targeted employees of the NGO'S in African Countries using questionnaires and carried out a census.  The collected data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and the data was presented in the form of percentages and tables. Among the key findings established in the study were that advocacy initiative and community mobilization had a major effect on home-based project in HIV/Aids management.  Project monitoring and evaluation was also found to have a relatively high influence on home-based projects in HIV/Aids management (77.9%).  Training of human resource had a relatively low influence HBC projects in HIV/Aids management, (75.5%) when compared to funding policies (67.3%).  The researcher recommends that all the necessary efforts should be made to fund the HBC projects, impart skills on monitoring and evaluation, donors should also get flexible reporting formats, and beneficiaries of these projects should be active in those Projects activities.