9. Comprehensive health services are not the same as Integrated
health services, but both are necessary to deliver good services to
key populations, and to promote uptake of services.
The PSI New Start facilities, in particular, describe their services as “integrated”, but this may
be a misnomer. Whilst there is a logical flow to the sequence of services, from entry-point
issues (HIV; family planning; cancer screening) to other programmes (ART; PREP; contact
tracing; STI treatment), it may be more accurate instead to describe the package of diverse
services as ‘comprehensive’.
But why not convincingly “integrated”? Most notably at these facilities, the range of services
are presently provided in compartmentalised ways, organised by ‘specialisation’ into
departments between which clients are transferred. Clients may meet with an initial nurse or
counsellor in a consulting or examination room. HIV counselling and HIV testing take place
in a separate section of the facility, staffed by different nurses. Family Planning is a separate
department. TB-screening is a separate department. area. Each area may have its own
queue or waiting area.
Given that “visibility equals vulnerability”, and the realities of a busy, congested, high-traffic
facility, this is a less than ideal design for an integrated service, especially one that is intended
to be KP-sensitive. Amongst other effects:
i. It increases wait-time and through-time in the facility.
ii. It increases the level of visibility and exposure for key populations to staff
and other service-users; there is a higher chance of a KP-client leaving
midway through the visit, or avoiding seeking services entirely.
iii. It requires a client to repeat a history several times, depending on how
many service providers he or she is required to see.
More appropriately, an integrated service might mean that a client sees as few health workers
as possible in a single visit, and that, ideally, one health worker is qualified to provide a range
of services: to do HIV counselling and testing; to examine and treat STIs; to take TB samples;
etc. For the service-user, integration means:
• good systems for communication and handover between service- providers
“We don’t want to have to keep explaining our situation over and over and over
again to different people when we are referred between departments.”
Whilst comprehensive services provide the scope of clinical and health-related services,
integration facilitates the continuity of care where systems and services are organised,
primarily, to meet the patient need. And, in the context of key populations especially, those
needs are discretion, privacy, dignity, limited exposure, and efficient patient flow and facility
throughput.
Improving integration is a technical, systems and culture issue, and one of practical design.
It requires a different way of thinking about how health workers are trained, how the health
system operates within the environment of the facility, and how the physical layout of the
clinic is organised to facilitate smooth and efficient movement of clients from entry to exit. It
presents a programming opportunity for modelling thoughtful design of a KP-friendly health
facility.
10. A health facility cannot claim to offer a “KP-friendly service”
where STI care, treatment and management are not offered as a
stand-alone programme or service.
Two interrelated issues were prolific in conversation with the key populations focus groups in
both Harare and Bulawayo: sex, and sexually transmitted infections. People are having sex –
not infrequently and, by choice or circumstance, not always safely – and they are contracting
infections. Infections other than HIV.
In a public health landscape where sexual and reproductive health discourse is still dominated
by HIV prevention and treatment targets, STIs receive relatively little profile. And yet, they
constitute an equally voracious parallel epidemic of frequently atypical or asymptomatic
presentation, with significant negative health consequences, and damaging psychosocial
impacts that compound stigma. More, the presence of an STI multiplies the transmissibility
of HIV and the risk of acquiring it.
• an experience that is as seamless, smooth and easy to navigate as possible.
• that services are coordinated and organised to reduce the stages in a visit (ideally a single
point of care) and the number of separate visits required.
PERCEPTIONS, PERSPECTIVES
Access to facility-based health services for LGBT people in
Harare & Bulawayo, Zimbabwe: A Situational Analysis
15
Select target paragraph3
Add to table of contents