In 2022, l’Association African Solidarité (AAS), a nonprofit health center that serves around 100,000 people in Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou, had to turn away patients who needed laboratory testing.
The lack of adapted lab equipment meant that the facility had to limit the number of blood samples they processed each day. This can be especially detrimental in HIV care because it slows down the pace of viral-load testing (that is, measuring how much of the virus is in a person’s blood).
Viral-load testing is key for assessing how well HIV treatment is working and supporting patients until they achieve viral-load suppression, which is when their health outcomes improve and they can no longer transmit the virus to others.
One year later, after receiving a substantial donation of health care supplies and equipment, AAS has increased its laboratory testing capacity by 150%, and it no longer has to turn patients away.
“Before, we could only take a maximum of 20 samples per day,” says Dr. Andriamanana Miarisoa Rajaonarivelo, AAS’s chief medical officer. “The laboratory no longer limits the number of samples to be processed. Any patient who comes can benefit from a sample.”
Connecting patients to the best possible care
The improvements to patient care at AAS, as well as 30 other local health facilities that serve people living with HIV in Burkina Faso and Togo, were years in the making.
FHI 360 has partnered with these health facilities since 2019 to connect people to quality HIV testing, care and treatment. This work is done through the Ending AIDS in West Africa (EAWA) project, funded by USAID under PEPFAR, and includes collaborations with government institutions, faith-based organizations and associations across West Africa.
Offering the best possible care and treatment for people living with HIV was not always possible. Many of the project’s local partner facilities in Burkina Faso and Togo — which include 59 health centers and three standalone laboratories — lacked sufficient medical equipment and supplies.
Although EAWA provided its partner health centers with some basic supplies in 2021 and 2022, gaps remained as demand for health care increased.
“The long waiting time was a reality at the center,” says Dr. Yacouba Kabre, another provider at AAS. Further preventing patient care was “the unavailability of certain essential products, such as antihypertensives and antidiabetics.”
Forces en Action pour le Mieux-être de la Mère de l’Enfant (FAMME) — a partner facility in Lomé, Togo, that serves 300,000 people — had a similar experience.
“We had a small laboratory which had some equipment, but it lacked a lot of equipment to allow us to carry out proper analyses,” says Dr. Dometo Sodji, FAMME’s executive director.
A partnership that met local facilities’ true needs
To ensure that AAS and FAMME, and 29 other facilities, had the medical supplies and equipment they needed to provide quality patient care, the project collaborated with Project C.U.R.E., a longtime FHI 360 partner that distributes medical supplies and equipment donations to communities worldwide.
The health facilities knew what they needed — and what they could accomplish if they had the necessary equipment. So FHI 360, Project C.U.R.E. and the national HIV programs met with each facility to listen to their needs and aspirations and identify what gaps in service delivery could be filled with new supplies and equipment.
This was different from how other organizations had tried to help in the past. Dr. Rajaonarivelo of AAS says, “If [other partners] have something to give, they give without taking the trouble to see if it will be useful to us.”
FHI 360 and Project C.U.R.E. were not alone in conducting the facilities’ needs assessments. The national HIV programs of both countries partnered on the assessments and the donation logistics.
“The collaboration between the Ministry of Health, the EAWA project and Project C.U.R.E. was exemplary,” says Abdoulaye Guire, who is the coordinator of Burkina Faso’s public health program to combat AIDS, sexually transmitted infections, and viral hepatitis.
In spring 2023, FHI 360, Project C.U.R.E., the heath facilities and the national HIV programs unloaded US$2.4 million worth of medical supplies and equipment from seven ocean freight containers.
The donations, which were delivered to the 31 health facilities, ranged from basic supplies like syringes, stethoscopes and blood pressure cuffs to more specialized equipment such as noninvasive ventilators, operating and exam tables, and operating room lights.
Increasing access to necessary supplies
Providers at both AAS and FAMME say that the donations have improved the medical care they can provide for their patients. Their patients agree.
Mary*, a regular patient at AAS, shares that during a recent blood test, she felt “more at ease” because of the new equipment. “There was a new chair and a table with tidy materials,” she says.
At FAMME, whose services also include primary health care, the clinicians were able to open a maternity ward and provide obstetrical services. Two healthy babies were born there in the months immediately after the donations were received.
“We can offer all the services that we were unable to … We have chairs where people sit comfortably, and you can draw blood. That’s really important,” Dr. Sodji says. “We [also] have large beds that are the pride of our sociomedical unit.”
An additional outcome of the donations is that the facilities can work toward long-term financial and operational sustainability. For example, FAMME was able to reallocate money to repair existing equipment and purchase more specialized supplies.
Increasing access to sustainable HIV care
The year-long process of listening to what the local health facilities really needed, then collaborating with an international partner and national ministries of health to make it happen, has enabled the health facilities to do what they do best: provide high-quality patient care.
AAS and FAMME both speak of their desire for the donations to have a lasting impact on the lives of their patients.
“I hope that our patients and community members continue to benefit from quality [health] services adapted to their needs,” says Dr. Rajaonarivelo, “and that they have everything they need at AAS.”
*Name has been changed.