On February 23, 2022, CQUIN’s community of practice for differentiated HIV and non-communicable disease (NCD) services convened a 90-minute webinar for francophone countries in the CQUIN network. The purpose was to discuss the importance of integrating HIV and NCD services and lessons learned about differentiated HIV/NCD models.
Participants included representatives from Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Senegal, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) ministries of health, PEPFAR, OGAC, USAID, networks of people living with HIV, implementing partners, and other key stakeholders.
“The goal of the meeting was to make sure that francophone countries in the network are aware of the importance of integrating NCD services into HIV care,” said Herve Kambale, MD, MPH, the HIV/NCD community of practice lead. “Currently, many of the African countries piloting or scaling up integrated models of HIV/NCD care are anglophone,” added Kambale.
CQUIN partners in West Africa report no initiatives or pilot projects on DSD models that integrate HIV and NCD services. In response, the meeting was designed to share lessons learned from the different models being implemented in other CQUIN member countries, particularly Eswatini and Kenya. Helen Bygrave, MD, chronic diseases advisor for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders), gave framing remarks on the importance of integrating HIV and NCD services.
“The NCDs community of practice meeting was highly valuable,” said Israel Bohossou, MD, MPH, DSD advisor for Côte d’Ivoire’s Programme National de Lutte Contre le Sida (National Program to Fight HIV/AIDS, PNLS). “Côte d’Ivoire will be thinking through plans for implementing pilot projects that integrate HIV and NCD services,” he said.
CQUIN’s HIV/NCD meets quarterly and will continue to create avenues for countries to share experiences and learn from each other, as well as review documents including guidelines, standard operation procedures, job aids, and algorithms.
