Amhara Region Community Capacity Enhancement -Impact Assessment Has Been Conducted

Community capacity enhancement (CCE) is one of the community mobilizations strategies at a grass root level aiming to combat the pandemic by capacitating the community to realize the problem and take measure to tackle it by their own local capacity.  CCE has been implemented in Amhara region since 2004 and has believed to brought major results in terms of awareness creations and behavioral changes towards health service utilizations and other sexual behaviors but these beliefs have not been evaluated and Amhara regional HAPCO recognized the need and has given the opportunity to universities and other institutions who have the capacity to undertake the CCE impact assessments, based on these Bahirdar university has conducted an assessment on the implementations, process, and outcomes of CCE in the region.

The assessment revealed that community conversation increased the Amhara region community’s comprehensive knowledge by 20.6%, decreased misconceptions by 31.4%, increased favorable attitude towards condom by 23.2% decreased discriminating behavior by 25.1% and increased VCT uptake by 58.8%. The full document will be available soon.

 

 

Family Health International (fhi)-Ethiopia is Targeted to Address 43,625 Populations in Amhara Region Through Its Projects.

fhi-Ethiopia in association with ANRS Bureau of Health, HAPCO & Bureau of Education is working on HIV/AIDS prevention, care, support and treatment in Amhara region under the Amhara most at risk population groups (MARPs) and CHSWD/Palliative care projects.

Amhara most at risk population groups [MARPs] project started in October 1, 2009, targeting in school youth & female sex workers. Currently it is under implementation in five selected urban & rural woredas (Burie, Bahir Dar, Metema, and Woldia & Dessie). The project aimed at addressing the target populations with minimum packages of MARPs friendly services including strategic behavior change communication, HIV counseling & testing, condom promotion & distribution, STI prevention & treatment and referral linkages for a total of 7900 Sex workers and 33223 students in 15 Schools of 5 Hotspot areas.

Inaddition, in its HCBC/Palliative care project, Home and community based care (HCBC/PC) is one of the components in prevention and control of HIV/AIDS. fhi-Ethiopia through identified implementers is providing palliative care service in Gondar, Dessie and Kombolcha towns in the  region for a total of 2502 [Female =1818] beneficiaries. Of these, 2433 [Female=1782] beneficiaries are on ART.

The fhi-Ethiopia is mainly providing technical support and capacity building to the government and local implementing partners.