Dignitas International

Dignitas International (DI), is a Canadian medical humanitarian NGO that supports the Ministry of Health (MOH) in Malawi in the implementation and scale-up of HIV-related services through the public health system. The organization was co-founded in 2003 by Dr. James Orbinski, who accepted the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize as International President of Médecins sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF), and James Fraser, who is the current Executive Director.

In partnership with the MOH HIV Unit in Malawi, Zomba Central Hospital, and the Zomba District Health Office, DI helps to provide clinical care for HIV positive patients and their families in a catchment area of about 700,000 people, where HIV seroprevalence is upwards of 14% of the adult population.

According to the UNDP Human Development Index, Malawi is the 10th poorest country in the world, and is in the midst of a devastating human resource crisis in health care. In this setting, over 12,000 patients have been enrolled on ART since project inception in 2004, and it is expected by the end of 2010, over 15,000 patients will be on ART through the DI/MOH partnership in Zomba District. In addition to supporting ART provision and HIV clinical care in the main hospital, care has also been decentralized to over 19 rural health centers. Through training, supportive supervision and mentorship, DI has also worked with the MOH to scale up HTC services to 38 facilities within Zomba District, and PMTCT to 29 health facilities. Finally, DI coordinates TB-HIV integration activities and a dedicated Health Care Workers (Caring for the Carers) Clinic at the Zomba Central Hospital. In 2010, DI has secured funding to scale up their integrated primary care model of rural ART decentralization to five additional districts in Malawi, increasing their catchment area to over 2 million people.

As an academic NGO, DI has established links with the University of Toronto, the British Columbia Center for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, the University of Capetown, REACH Trust Malawi and the Malawi-Liverpool Wellcome Trust. Research and knowledge translation activities for DI are primarily focused on monitoring and evaluation efforts and operations research activities directly related to program implementation and improvement in health services delivery (specifically in ART provision, PMTCT and TB/HIV Integration), and also to inform national policy change within Malawi.