DISHA

     DISTRICT INTEGRATED STRATEGIC HIV /AIDS ACTION PLAN showing direction to HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, care and support activities

 Vision:

   To develop a replicable model of district-based holistic and integrated HIV/AIDS programming thereby impacting and decreasing the HIV/ AIDS incidence and prevalence amongst women, young people and children.

 District based Holistic and integrated HIV/ AIDS program includes:

 Ø      Scaling up access to PPTCT services in the district, to ensure coverage at community level and integration with strengthening of Maternal and Child Health services

Ø      Ensuring that 80% young people in these districts have accurate knowledge on HIV prevention and transmission (through in school and out of school initiatives)

Ø      Ensuring that 60% young people have accurate knowledge and skills to practice safe  behaviors  and seek and access youth friendly services.

Ø      Understanding the epidemic with the districts perspective, for example, vulnerability mapping, exploring social and sexual networks that fuel the epidemic thus facilitating the development of responses tailored to the needs.

Ø      Strengthening partnerships and linkages at the district level between all HIV/AIDS programs, for example, PPTCT, VCCTC, ART, TB, Blood Safety,  School, STDs etc and also between synergistic national health and development programs like, ICDS, Rural Health Mission, Sarva  Shikshan  Abhiyan, etc.

Ø      Building the capacity of the community and district level key stakeholders to respond effectively to the epidemic on a long term basis through village/ micro planning for community empowerment

Ø      Monitoring processes in place to understand the impact on the epidemic at the district level

All the above informed through research, with good documentation, and dissemination plan, with built in monitoring and evaluation systems, leading to policy development and changes as necessary.

 DISHA is a 10 point program as enumerated below:

1. Micro planning to enhance Community participation and community mobilization (all slum pockets within identified wards to participate in micro planning processes)
2. To increase access to quality Counseling for HIV/AIDS across the ward (enhance awareness and linkages with existing VCTCs,  explore possibility of mobile VCTC-private partnerships)
3. Strengthening the network of people Living with HIV/AIDS (linkage with existing VCTC, PPTCT centers)
4. Increase access to PPTCT services (all public health care facilities to offer PPTCT services, build private linkages)
5. Increase knowledge and skills amongst all young people-10-24 years with a specific focus on vulnerable and high risk groups
1. All schools to be covered with the School Adolescence Life Skills Education Programme- SALSEP
2. All out of school vulnerable youth to be reached out through SPARSH-integrated with micro planning
3. Youth Friendly Services (YFS) to be initially started in the public systems
6. Targeted Interventions program reaching out to vulnerable and high risk groups, namely,

            a. Those who test HIV negative: awareness campaigns, IEC etc

            b. Those who test HIV positive: link to PWA networks, ART, TB, OIs 

            c. High risk and vulnerable groups-hotel boys, migrant workers, truckers, CSWs and their

                clients, IDUs (depending on the ward), link with NGO programs.

7. Enhancing public-private partnerships to strengthen the response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic: IMA, FOGSI, IAP, other alternate medical practitioners-homeopathy, ayurveda etc
8. To ensure that all workplaces public and private have access to information and other HIV/AIDS services: link with NGOs
9. To work towards a strategic and integrated response plan for Children affected and made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS: complete a rapid situational analysis, link with PWA networks etc
10. To ensure Convergence through DISHA of all sectoral programs at the ward and city level: includes health sector, education, ICDS, urban planning, DWCD etc

 Implementation Plan: DISHA-Mumbai

 DISHA is envisaged to be a 2 and half year initiative, from October 2005 to December 2007. It is proposed to develop monitoring and impact/outcome evaluation formats to assess the impact of DISHA. DISHA will be implemented in six wards of the Mumbai i.e G-North, P-North, M-East, H-East, R-South, and L.

 Key partners:

MDACS will be the nodal agency for the implementation of DISHA with the BMC public Health Department and UNICEF as key partners. Other key stakeholders shall also be involved in DISHA as per the points in DISHA and as implementation is in progress.