News & Events

ECF NIMART Training

311 Nurses Trained by ECF

According to UNAIDS, South Africa has one of the highest HIV infection rates in the world with approximately 7 million people living with HIV. The country is also home to one of the largest ART programmes in the world.

Due to a shortage of doctors, over-congestion at hospitals and Primary Health Care (PHC) re-engineering, there is a shift in strategy to decentralise ART administration from hospitals to PHC clinics where nurses initiate eligible patients on ART.

It has therefore became essential for nurses to be trained on the clinical management of HIV and associated conditions. ECF’s predecessor Enhancing Care Initiative (ECI), was a chosen service provider to the KZN Department of Health to provide clinical training to nurses on management of HIV and AIDS. Since the rollout of NIMART Training, ECF developed their own training programme and has trained more than 311 nurses throughout the country through funding from BroadReach Healthcare (BRHC).

With this successful completion, ECF now continues to provide much needed  NIMART training to nurses at a set fee. The course is provided by Dr Trevor Majoro, a well-renowned HIV clinician who has received many accolades and is highly recommended by the National Department of Health (NDOH). The 5 Day NIMART training offered by ECF provides the nurse with an interactive approach to clinical ART initiation and management of patients with HIV and uses a case-based technique to learning.

Course Overview

The Course aims to provide clinically integrated foundation knowledge of mainly HIV, TB and STIs in association with Communicable Diseases and provides healthcare workers with an easy to understand but science-based, evidence-informed competency to manage PLWH at a primary care level.

Topics covered include:

  • Basic Virology, Pathophysiology and impact, Natural History and Disease Progression, Clinical Presentation and STIs.
  • Opportunistic Infections.
  • Assessment, Diagnosis and Management approach of a person presenting with unintentional weight loss.
  • Post-Diagnostic Assessment of a PLWH.
  • Prophylactic Therapy in a PLWH.
  • TB and TB/HIV Co-infection.
  • Antiretroviral Therapy : What ARVs do and How they work. Classes, Individual drugs, Regimen, Adherence, Side Effects / Toxicities and management, Basic Interactions, IRIS, Efficacy and Failure, Resistance basics introduction, Initiation, PrEP, PEP, Monitoring, Switch, Shift, Support and/or Stop.
  • PMTCT / eMTCT.
  • Basic Paediatric HIV Care.
  • Pragmatic Clinical and Holistic Wellbeing Activities of interventive relevance.

Objectives

  • By the end of the NIMART course, trainees will have covered pertinent aspects of clinical HIV/AIDS management and would:
  • Have an understanding of the basic virology, pathophysiology and clinical features of HIV
  • Be able to assess the HIV-infected patient (history and examination) and stage using WHO staging criteria
  • Understand, recognise, prevent and manage OIs at a PHC level
  • Understand, recognize, prevent and manage STIs syndromically.
  • Understand, diagnose and manage patients with TB in the setting of HIV
  • Understand the rationale for ARV usage and monitoring
  • Be able to initiate adults and children on ART
  • Understand and have the skills to monitor patients on ART including understand and manage treatment failure
  • Understand adherence to ART and be able to counsel patients appropriately and skilfully
  • Understand the management of ART in women
  • Be able to confidently assess and manage the HIV-infected adult and child
  • Understand the basic basis of ART Drug Resistance.

For more information on the course, please contact Mr Muzi Shange on 0312611093 or email mshange@ecarefoundation.com