Workplace Programmes: HIV-related Care and Treatment Services
Since 2006, Zoë-Life's Mobile HCT Units and Clinical Training personnel have offered comprehensive HIV care and treatment services at company sites around the province of KZN. This corporate outreach programme reaches people where they spend most of their active hours, and integrates TB/HIV education, counselling, HIV testing, TB screening, referral assistance, ARV adherence support, nutrition advice and general wellness strategies.
Whereas the majority of clients attending clinic facilities are already ill, offering services in the workplace enables clients to be diagnosed earlier, before succumbing to opportunistic infections. These programmes are particularly effective in supporting HIV prevention, which is as important as reducing the losses caused to business by AIDS-related illness and mortality.
Work-sites are ideal locations at which to provide people with information on how HIV is transmitted and affects the body, what testing and diagnosis entails, care and treatment options, advice on safe sex and behaviour change, and other wellness strategies. Employees at every level of an organisation should be empowered to know their HIV status, avoid becoming infected or live positively with HIV.
Grouping managers and staff together to share in this learning and awareness can help to foster improved working relationships and reduce HIV-related stigma and discrimination. It also creates a valuable forum for providing updates on policy advancements and clinical interventions, such as medical male circumcision and microbicides.
Zoë-Life's training emphasises both workers' rights as well as the benefits of disclosure - explaining that living openly with HIV enables employers to accommodate an employee's special health needs and facilitate readier access to support and services. Through early diagnosis, disclosure and management of HIV and TB, the wellbeing of clients, their families, communities and other social networks can be preserved and enhanced.
Christy Joy Webster, Zoë-Life's Clinical Trainer, advises company management on the Workplace Programme approach and outline, prepares the appropriate service package and conducts the training in isiZulu as required. To overcome HIV-related stigma, all employees are individually counselled about testing, but the test itself is a voluntary process. Zoë-Life provides a full report containing aggregated data to the employer, and client records are kept off-site by Zoë-Life, maintaining confidentiality and making follow-up easier.
Christy Joy is experienced in the use of a toolkit developed by the South African Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS when Zoë-Life is contracted by SABCOHA to train organisations in developing and implementing workplace HIV policies and processes. She also applies Zoë-Life's "Well Wheel" resource as a holistic tool to raise awareness within Human Resources departments about managing HIV and wellness in the workplace.