ASSESSING AND PLANNING HOME-BASED CARE FOR PERSONS WITH AIDS

The HIV/AIDS pandemic continues to gather momentum in many developing countries, increasing the already heavy burden on health care faciliti es. As a result, donors, implementing partners and communities are beg inning to create home-based care programmes to provide care for person s with HIV/AIDS. This paper recommends reorienting this home care prov ision as a service founded in, and coming from, the community rather t han the health system. A methodology, in the form of an assessment mat rix, is provided to facilitate the assessment of a community's capacit y to provide care for people with AIDS. The focus is on rapid assessme nt methods using, where possible, readily available information to cle arly and systematically define current circumstances. The matrix creat ed for a specific community is then used in the development of an acti on plan with interventions prioritized and tailored to local needs. A case study from a hypothetical developing country, where HIV/AIDS is a significant problem, is used to illustrate the process.