Prevention Unit

Prevention, Care and Treatment (PCT) Department

The Prevention Unit focuses on HIV Testing Services (HTS) and the management of Persons at High risk for HIV (PHRH).

Apart from offering HTS services, we provide numerous prevention services to PHRH including children and adolescents.

Key Mandate:

HIV Testing Services: Our goal is to disrupt the chain of HIV transmission by finding and offering HTS to persons who have been exposed to HIV, including those at substantial risk and linking them to HIV treatment, care and support if HIV positive. If negative, they are linked to prevention services (e.g. Risk Reduction Counselling (RRC), Post Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP), Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), Condoms services). HIV Testing Services are offered in health facilities we support and in targeted communities utilizing strategies that enhance efficiency in locating people living with HIV.

These strategies include,

Provider Initiated Testing and Counselling (PITC) at strategic point of services within the Healthcare facilities,
Index Testing also known as Partner(s) Notification Services (PNS)/Family testing and Social Network Testing.
Strategic community testing riding on Private Medicine Vendors (PMVs), Private Laboratories and Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs).
Targeted geographic hotspot testing for the PHRH
HIV Self Test distribution and testing targeting the underserved and those at the hard-to-each location

HIV testing in progress during a community outreach to Karmajiji Internally Displaced Peoples Camp in Abuja, Nigeria

The primary goal is to ensure that 95% of all people living with HIV know their status and are linked to core HIV/AIDs services within the four states supported under the ACTION to Sustain Precision and Integrated HIV Response towards Epidemic Control (ASPIRE) project namely Federal capital Territory (FCT), Katsina Nasarawa, and Rivers States.

Persons at High Risk for HIV (PHRH):

The mandate is to locate and reach out to the PHRH including but not limited to adolescents, men and other persons at substantial risk for HIV. The PHRH are targeted to disrupt the transmission chain of HIV by finding those living with HIV, offering prevention services and linking them to appropriate treatment, care and support services.

Approaches employed include strategically testing PHRH who are likely to be positive using a risk profile-based approach. This approach relies on behavioural and biological markers for HIV. To this end, testing is done for all PHRH presenting with sexually transmitted infections (STIs), low condom use, high risk sex, and PHRH with sero-discordant partners. We also attempt to screen for mental health issues of the PHRH.

ASPIRE Project is collaborating with some reputable Community Based Organizations towards the achievement of these objectives.

Violence Prevention

The unit is also saddled with the responsibility of ensuring the prevention of violence across all sub-populations and to provide effective post violence care and management to survivors of violence. This is implemented across the general populations within the facilities and the PHRH within the communities.