Community-led monitoring has a significant impact on ensuring quality care and treatment services in the respective health facilities. Service recipients’ opinions on the quality of the service they receive or the kind of services they demand and service providers’ provision or inaction of the service create more confidence in service users and increase uptake of the respective service. This has been evidenced by initiation of PREP service at Salawe health center in Shinyanga DC that resulted from number of service users’ opinions during data collection by community monitors.
One of the findings of Community-led monitoring was unavailability of Prep services at Salawe Health center. Clients were not aware of the service and they none of them confessed to get the service and even service providers confessed that there was no Prep service at their facility. Considering Prep is one of the potential services in preventing new HIV infection, TAI presented this finding during the quarterly meeting with CHMT of Shinyanga DC. And District AIDS Coordinator (DAC) responded that the vendor was in place though the service initiation has delayed.
The situation was the same and during the quarterly meeting it was insisted that this should be taken more seriously being taken into priority actions for the quarter for service improvement by CHMT, for the first time PREP services were initiated at Salawe health center. We happy that through Community-led monitoring we have fastened the initiation of Prep services at Salawe health center. Some of the community monitors confessed that community Led monitoring project has improved their confidence when the provide service to clients and improved their relationship because they have witnessed their feedback/opinion being worked on.