2009-02-14T13:11:36Z

false Partners In Health (PIH) is a Boston-based non-profit organization working in 9 countries around the world with a mission to provide a preferential option for the poor in health care. In 2010-2011, Global Health Corps Fellows will work at PIH sites in Rwanda, Malawi, and the United States. Partners In Health in Rwanda Inshuti Mu Buzima (“Partners In Health” in the Rwandan national language, Kinyarwanda) was launched in the spring of 2005 at the invitation of the Rwandan government. Inshuti Mu Buzima (IMB) is part of an innovative partnership among strongly committed public and private organizations, including the Rwandan Ministry of Health, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative. Together, IMB and its partners have undertaken a commitment to scale up HIV treatment and care in rural Rwanda; to strengthen the country’s national training and evaluation programs; and to develop, document and disseminate a rural care model for HIV that can be adapted and replicated throughout Rwanda and other African countries. The PIH/IMB Hospitals and health centers in Rwanda now offer a full range of services including comprehensive HIV prevention and treatment programs, tuberculosis treatment, ambulatory primary care services prenatal care, family planning, malnutrition programs, and maternity and emergency obstetrical care. Partners In Health in Malawi In early 2007, at the invitation of the Clinton Foundation and the Ministry of Health in Malawi, PIH (Abwenzi Pa Za Umoyo (APZU) in Chichewa, the national language of Malawi) began operating in Malawi to replicate the rural initiative programs that have proven so successful in delivering HIV treatment and comprehensive primary health care in Rwanda and Lesotho. The Malawi Ministry of Health directed PIH and CHDI to the impoverished rural area of Neno, and in early 2007, the partners began to implement an ambitious plan to combat the disease. Like PIH’s other projects, APZU combines treatment for HIV patients with comprehensive, community-based health care and programs to combat the conditions of extreme poverty in which disease takes root, including hunger and lack of access to clean water and decent housing, schools and livelihoods. Work for APZU began at the Neno Rural Hospital, a district health center about four hours drive from the capital city of Lilongwe. From Neno and ten other rural health centers, APZU serves about 100,000 people spread over an impoverished rural area about half the size of Rhode Island. Partners In Health in the United States The Prevention and Access to Care and Treatment (PACT) project serves the sickest and most marginalized HIV patients in Boston. Adapting the accompagnateur model developed in Haiti, PIH’s only domestic healthcare program trains and employs community members to check in on HIV patients on a daily or weekly basis, making sure they attend medical appointments, take their medications and have access to other essential needs and social services. PACT also recruits and trains people from at-risk communities to become prevention and harm reduction leaders, conducting education and support activities with injection drug users to help them avoid becoming infected with HIV. 1 Partners In Health

2010-02-01T21:23:04Z

http://www.pih.org