ESTIMATING COVERAGE OF A COMMUNITY-BASED HOME CARE PROGRAM

The Family AIDS Caring Trust (FACT) was formed in Mutare, Zimbabwe's t hird largest city, in 1987. FACT's home care programme started in 1992 . The programme operates in the urban area of Mutare' which contains t hree townships with a population of 131 367. The area employs a traine d nurse as a coordinator and four assistants, each assigned a zone wit hin the city, who carry out the bulk of the visits. As part of an eval uation of the programme we attempted to estimate its coverage using di fferent models. Using these models the FACT programme has a coverage o f between 2.5%-23%. It is important that all home care programmes thin k in terms of coverage and do not simply strive to provide high qualit y services to a few patients.