Hypothetically speaking…
You live in northern Uganda. You may have HIV or you suspect that you have it. You will more than likely make your way to TASO Gulu for Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT), the Community Drug Dispersal Point (CDDP) to refill your anti-retrovirals, attending group counselling, receiving medical or psychosocial support and receiving some of the best overall HIV/AIDS care in all of east Africa.
Your first stop at TASO is triage where you will pay 1000 shillings (roughly $0.25), get your file retrieved from the mountain of patient data and get weighed which is paramount in monitoring a HIV/AIDS patient’s progress through the World Health Organization’s HIV staging metrics. You’ll speak to a TASO staff member (usually a registered nurse or clerk) who will determine whether you need medical or counselling attention.
If you need counselling attention, TASO’s unbelievably dedicated staff of sixteen professional counsellors will listen to you for at least 30 minutes about how you are handling life with HIV from the personal, family and community perspectives. Women in northern Uganda face tremendous amounts of challenges with their husbands not wanting to get tested or to seek medical or psychosocial care for HIV.
Medical care at TASO is amongst the best in Gulu. There are a dedicated team of medical officers and clinical officers (physician assistants) who see over 500 patients on clinic days. A treatment plan is made and they are either referred to St. Mary’s in Lacor (neighbouring Gulu) for further diagnostics (especially the use of their X-Ray machine) or to the TASO pharmacy.
The TASO pharmacy is stocked with most first-line treatments for viral, fungal and bacterial infections as well as the whole gamut of anti-retrovirals currently being provided by the USAID and the Centre for Disease for Control (CDC).
The photos don’t show the amount of idling for the clients (I’ll never complain about ER wait-times ever again) but the care a patient receives is amongst the best they can get in Uganda. Nevertheless, It’s disheartening after seeing the public health care system (more to come later), that it seems that to get quality medical care, you need to be HIV positive.
