Effects of late “visits” re-booking practice at Mpilo and Parirenyatwa hospitals Opportunistic Infections clinics for the HIV/AIDS & TB Programme in the Ministry of Health and Child Care

Abstract

Worldwide, an estimated 34 million people were living with HIV, but only 47% of the people in low- and middle-income countries eligible for antiretroviral therapy (ART) were receiving treatment at the end of 2013. Zimbabwe initiated its national ART programme in April 2004, and since that time the benefits of such therapy have been widely documented in the country. The scaling up of the ART programme is facilitated by the identification and approval of ART-initiating sites using standardized assessment tools and simplified treatment guidelines that employ the public-health approach as well as the family-centred approach. It is now widely accepted that even resource-poor countries using a public-health approach to HIV and AIDS care and treatment can achieve similar effectiveness with these antiretrovirals (ARVs)as observed inmore affluent settings.

The aim of this study is to assess the effectiveness of the two different rebooking methods practiced by Mpilo and Parirenyatwa Central Hospitals in the provision of the ART and OI services in Zimbabwe while exploiting the work done by others on gender mainstreaming theory, the queuing theory and deducting from McGregor’s Theories X and Y. The study also set to elucidate on how the need to rebook appointments arose in the health facilities in Zimbabwe. Some of the factors that cause clients not to honour their booked appointments were explained and validated as the study progressed to look at the best way to deal with this seemingly minority population of People Living With HIV (PLWHIV) in Zimbabwe. This key population is quite crucial if Zimbabwe is to put up a successful fight against HIV/AIDS. There are deadly consequences ranging from treatment failure to multiple drug resistance up to the much dreaded revival of the HIV related mortality/death rates that were beginning to decline. The epitome of this study is when it will assess the performance of different patient re-booking approaches in terms of the treatment outcomes for the patients who have been rebooked. The study also focuses on the human-work relationships in order to assess the silent yet salient factors that affect patient care for those patients who miss their normal booked times in the OI/ART clinics of both Mpilo and Parirenyatwa Central Hospitals.