Managerial Challenges in Addressing HIV/AIDS: Gujarat State AIDS Control Society (GSACS)

The spread of HIV/AIDS is not merely a problem of public health; it is also an economic, political, and social challenge that threatens to hinder decades of progress in different parts of Gujarat. There is an urgent need to significantly scale-up public health interventions that work to make a meaningful impact. While NGOs and community based organizations have a critical role to play in implementing these interventions amongst the various population groups, the government must shoulder the overall responsibility for planning, coordinating, mobilizing, and facilitating the various HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment services in the state. Generally, the departments of HIV/AIDS are dominated by doctor-managers who lack training in management. This working paper was developed with objective of enhancing the skills of the program implementers. In this paper, in first three chapters we describe the overall situation of HIV/AIDS globally and nationally. Major challenges in managing sentinel surveillance, behavior surveillance, targeted interventions and its subcomponents have been described in chapter four. Issues related to integration of HIV/AIDS activities with reproductive health has also been discussed in the chapter. In chapter five, we present a few case studies from Gujarat State AIDS Control Society. These cases focus on the managerial issues in the following areas: Project Management, Blood Bank Management, VCTC/ICTC Management, Behavioral Surveillance and MIS for Targeted Interventions. These case studies bring out the ground level realities and can help participants develop insights for better management of the HIV/AIDS programme.