Clinical Services

IDI aims to provide quality HIV care that meets both national and international standards, in a setting which facilitates research that can generate information on better approaches to HIV care in low resource settings. Details of the services are:

Comprehensive Care Package

All patients, referred to as ‘Friends’ at IDI, receive access to counselling, a safe water vessel, mosquito nets, condoms and screening for opportunistic infections. They are offered preventative treatment e.g. septrin for some illnesses.

First Line Treatment

About 7500 (95%) ‘Friends’ are receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) at the IDI clinic with 6000(80%) on first-line regimen. Patients’ response to treatment is monitored using routine viral load testing.  ‘Friends’ who are clinically stable on their treatment and have a good treatment adherence record are reviewed by nurses (nurse-only visits) or simply walk to the pharmacy (pharmacy refill visit) to refill their drugs. This arrangement reduces the amount of time such patients spend in the clinic, and allows clinicians to concentrate their time on patients who require clinical reviews.

Second Line Treatment

Over 1000 ‘Friends’ are currently receiving second-line ART (drugs taken after the HIV virus develops resistance to first-line ART therapy) at the clinic. IDI has one of Africa’s largest cohorts of patients receiving second-line therapy, and IDI is carefully monitoring their progress in an effort to develop more effective and replicable approaches to managing such complicated cases. Experience gathered in this area is becoming increasingly important in informing clinical management approaches, for this increasing patient population.

Complex Regimen

Over 300 ‘Friends’ receive more complex ART drug regimens, either due to co-current opportunistic infections other medical problems (such as kidney disease) or failure of second-line ART treatment. This specialized clinic is manned by a multidisciplinary team of physicians, doctors, nurses, counsellors and pharmacists, with vast experience in caring for such complex patients.

Services Available at IDI

The following services are available:

  • General clinic for HIV patients
  • Integrated TB-HIV clinic
  • Sexual and reproductive health services
  • Adolescents’ clinic
  • Discordant couples clinic
  • Senior citizens clinic
  • Mental health clinic
  • Non communicable diseases clinic
  • Kaposi’s sarcoma clinic
  • Co-Pay clinic services

For more details about these services click here.