Global Fund To Fight Aids, Tuberculosis And Malaria

The term Saksham comes from an Indian word which means, "Capable" or "Self- reliant".Saksham is a five year programme beginning from 2008 and being supported by the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria(GFATM).It is the counselling component of the - GFATM Round 7. Saksham is a unique partnership between 41 academic institutions that are working in close coordination with the public health system (National AIDS Control Organisation & State AIDS Control Society), and contributing to the National AIDS Control Programme.Tata Institute of Social Sciences is the Principal Recipient and it works in partnership with six Sub- Recipients (SRs) and 34 Sub-Sub- Recipients (SSRs). These implementing partners are located in 25 States of India.

Nirmala Institute of Education- Goa (NIE) was appointed as a SSR in the year 2009. Prior to this Nirmala Institute of Education conducted programmes for National AIDS Control Organisation to provide knowledge on prevention, treatment and care issues in HIV/ AIDS and to strengthen the skills of counsellors and health workers, to provide VCT/ PPTCT and ART counselling to the clients.

GOAL

The Goal of the Program is to strengthen human and institutional capacities of the National Health System in HIV/AIDS to enable accelerated growth of the National AIDS Control Program III

Organogram

Trainings

NIE-Goa works in tandem with the Goa State AIDS Control Society (GSACS) towards the goal of the project.  In this direction NIE-Goa strives to build the capacities of the counselors providing services in the field of HIV.

Presently there are 11 stand alone Integrated Counselling and Testing Centres (ICTCs), 3 Prevention of Parent to Child Transmission (PPTCT) centres (with 4 counsellors), 4 Sexually Transmitted Infection  (STI) clinics and 1 Anti- retro Viral Therapy (ART)  run by the GSACS in  Goa. Apart from these there are 16 Targeted Intervention (TI) projects and 2 Community Care Centres (CCC) that are being run by the NGOs and supported by GSACS.  All together there are 20 counsellors at these centres. So far we have conducted trainings for all the ICTC counsellors of Goa. We also had the privilege to train the ICTC counsellors of Gujarat.

Master Trainers

These trainings are being conducted with the help of the 19 Master Trainers who have been identified from among those working in the field of HIV/AIDS in Goa for more than 10 years. The Master Trainers have undergone intensive training at College of Social Work Nirmala Niketan, Mumbai. Apart from these master trainers we also invite resource persons who are experts in their field. The curriculum for the trainings is based on the training modules developed by NACO.

NIE-Goa has also conducted a 5- day refresher training for the Master Trainers from all over India from 28^th January to 1^st February 2011.

Learning Centres

We have identified 6 good practice centres consisting of one ICTC, one PPTCT, one ART, two CCC and one Targeted Intervention project. These centers are linked to the project and field visits are made to these centres during trainings.

Counsellor Supervision

A unique activity of the project is the ‘On –going Counselling’ Supervision. Trained supervisors visit the counsellor once in three months. The duration of each visit is for 4 to 5 hours and during the visits the supervisor acts as a mentor and helps the counsellors to build their skills through a structured handholding process. We conduct this activity with the help of 4 our counselling supervisors along with our CBO and TA who among themselves are mentoring 39 counsellors, these include the counselors of ICTCs, PPTCT, ART, CCC and TIs. The first rounds of visits were made in the month of August 2010 followed by the second round in November 2010. In September 2012 we had the 9^th round of visits to these counsellors.

NIE-Goa also hosted the 4 day training workshop for the counselling supervisors of Maharashtra from 10^th to 13^th January 2011.