Exploring how outreach team leaders perceive community health workers’ experiences of providing HIV services in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Abstract

The ward-based PHC outreach team comprises six to ten community health workers, one data capturer and one outreach team leader (South African National Department of Health, 2018). The CHWs -a key component of the ward-based PHC outreach team stream -are supervised by an outreach team leader (OTL) and act as a link between communities and the health system (Assegaai & Schneider, 2019; South African National Department of Health, 2018). In KwaZulu-Natal province (KZN), community health workers (CHW) are sometimes referred to as community caregivers Mottiar & Lodge, 2018). In KZN, the CHW model started in the early 1940s with the Pholela Health Centre as the forerunner (Tollman, 1994). In the early 2000s, evidence mounted on the important role that CHW play in supporting home-based care and PHC (Dageid et al., 2016). The roles of CHW have been expanded as a strategy to strengthen HIV health care services and provide longitudinal patient support in KZN (Kubheka et al., 2020;Loeliger et al., 2016aLoeliger et al., , 2016b. Community HIV interventions by CHWs have been seen as an important predictor of HIV treatment success (Daviaud et al., 2018) and these interventions include linking people living with HIV (PLWH) to health care, promoting ART adherence and improving retention in care (