Patient and community
These are materials designed to be used by patients, treatment supporters, home based caregivers and health care givers at health facilities and in the community.
The materials provide information and tools for patient self management and home based care. Recent updates include the separation of the patient self management materials from the caregiver materials and the expansion of the section on prevention interventions. The patient and community materials include:
Patient self-management booklet
The Patient self-management booklet is designed to be used both by patients, treatment supporters, and caregivers who provide care for them at home. It is formulated in language and illustrations that can be easily understood by patients and lay caregivers. (However, this draft assumes quite literate patients and needs careful country adaptation. Simplified, smaller booklets for less literate clients are in development.) Health workers use the booklet as a tool to teach patients and provide them with the information and skills that the patients can then use when at home when they need to manage their own problems.
The main objective of this booklet is to empower patients to take care of themselves, giving them skills to progressively gain a problem solving attitude (rather than informing them only)
Caregiver booklet
The Caregiver booklet is designed to be used by health workers to educate family members and other caregivers and then given to them to use as a reference at home in the home-based care of serious long term illness. Home care is often best for many people with long term illnesses, including those who are close to the end of life. All patients being cared for at home should first be assessed and treated by a trained health worker, who will help caregivers provide high quality home care and ensure that medicines are prescribed and taken correctly. The booklet covers prevention of problems, management of common symptoms, when to seek health care as well as special advice on psychosocial support. Although focused particularly on patients with HIV infection, the booklet can also be used for HIV negative patients with other chronic health problems.
Flipchart for patient education
This draft updated flipchart is a communication aid to be used at the health facility as well as by community health workers when education and training patients, family and caregivers. It provides essential information, offers tips and guidance and how to communicate with patients. The method used is based upon simple and effective messages conveyed to patients and caregiver by simple illustrations. In general the flipchart is used with HIV positive patients and their families and caregivers, but some of the sections such as prevention can be used for HIV negative patients.
Patient treatment cards
The patient treatment cards (one for each of the four first-line regimens) are used by health care workers when informing and educating patients in what it means to take ART—when and how to take their pills, how to manage mild side effects and when to seek care from the facility. In addition, prevention interventions such as safer sex are addressed. They are often sent home with the patient, and are for country adaptation and translation into local language.
Reproductive choices and family planning for people living with HIV - Counselling tool
This tool is designed to help health workers counsel people living with HIV on sexual and reproductive choices and family planning. It also is meant to help people living with HIV to make and carry out informed, healthy, and appropriate decisions about their sexual and reproductive lives.
These guidelines have been released for country adaptation and to help with the emergency scale-up of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in resource-limited settings. Interim guidelines are regularly revised based on early implementation experience. Please send comments, suggestions and requests for adaptation assistance to: imaimail@who.int.
For country adaptation, most IMAI publications, modules and recording forms are also available in Word and/or InDesign formats. To request these formats please send an email to imaimail@who.int.