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I-TECH India launched its own website on 15 April 2021. The website focuses on I-TECH India’s contribution since 2003 to strengthening the health system service delivery through continuous mentoring and capacity building initiatives. It includes information about I-TECH India’s partnership with the National AIDS Control Organisation, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, and other stakeholders to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic in India. The website also showcases the I-TECH India’s areas of work, accomplishments, dynamic team, leadership, and an archive of distance learning sessions. Visit itech-india.org to learn more.

I-TECH India, in collaboration with two non-governmental organizations (NGOs), Carmel Jyoti & Tabitha Home, which run care homes for children living with HIV in the North-eastern state, helped to launch community antiretroviral therapy (ART) refill groups (CARGs) at two sites in Imphal, Manipur in November 2019. Under the CARG differentiated care model, HIV care and treatment services are directly delivered to the children at the care home thereby reducing the frequency of their visits to the ART centre. The launch was jointly organized by I-TECH India, Manipur SACS, and the state paediatric Centre of Excellence.

Distance education is increasingly being used to teach a wide range of topics to various health care professionals. Since 1960, distance education has been used in several instances and has trained professionals who have demonstrated improved knowledge scores and performance in their workplace once they completed the program.
There is a critical lack of skilled health professionals in India and unfortunately leaving home, family and their work to attend training courses is not a viable option for currently practicing health professionals. As a response to this challenge, the implementation of distance education program has increased so that students can easily access the programs from any location in India.

What is Distance Education?

Distance education refers to the learning situation where the instructor and the learner are geographically separated and rely on electronic devices or printed materials for instruction delivery. It requires the students to enroll with an educational institution that offers lessons prepared in a sequential and logical order and upon completion of each lesson, the assigned work is corrected, graded and commented.
The main advantage of distance education programs is that the learners can easily learn at their own convenience, thereby accommodating their work and personal life.

How distance education helps healthcare professionals?

Distance education has been used to offer medical training to healthcare professionals or doctors since 1960. Though the objective range from teaching topics to pre-medical students such as health services administration to training nurses and etc. Most of the experiences are limited to areas of health education and training. To meet the diversified and emerging needs of health workers, some programs and courses have to go beyond medical graduates.

Some main advantages of distance learning are that it helps the healthcare professionals to fit their learning around their work and home life. Learners:

• Learners can decide as to when and where they can study
• They can set their own pace of study
• They are not restricted by geo locations, and you can get a degree from anywhere in the world
• It is economical and also less time consuming
• It offers a lot of flexibility and the learner can design his own schedule to learn and work simultaneously.

Having well trained and competent health professionals is the goal of any organization, but traditional training has various limitations. Distance education has helped to offer alternative training approaches that address the basic tenets of quality in healthcare.

To help decentralize ART services in Maharashtra, I-TECH India conducted a two-day training for 38 high-loaded LACs, 72 ART centres, and 34 District AIDS Prevention and Control Units (DAPCU). The training focused on the LAC guidelines; sharing the findings from the LAC assessment conducted by I-TECH India in 2017-18; and improving the overall coordination between DAPCU, Nodal ARTCs, and LACs to strengthen the service delivery at peripheral units in Maharashtra. There was a total of 168 participants, including medical doctors, pharmacists, counsellors, and district program officers. At the end of the training program, participants created action plans to align differentiated service delivery models through LAC.

I-TECH India started antiretroviral therapy (ART) initiation at Link ART Centre (LAC) in Noklak. These services are the first of their kind in the region and are considered an important step towards improving access to ART for people living in remote areas without transportation or adequate travel resources to the ART centres located in the district headquarters.

I-TECH India organized a two-day workshop on “Improving retention through team efforts,” in coordination with the Mumbai District AIDS Control Society (MDACS) on 24-25 August 2019. The goal of the workshop was to develop the leadership and managerial skills of ART centre staff for better planning, coordination, and teamwork, which can lead to more effective service delivery and improved client retention in HIV care. There were 63 participants who attended the workshop, including medical officers, counsellors, as well as staff from ART centres and MDACS. Sessions were focused on self-awareness, leadership, communication, coordination, time management, conflict management, problem solving, and mindfulness, which were applied using different participatory methodologies including roleplay.

The Centre of Excellence RIMS, Imphal; Manipur State AIDS Control Society (SACS); and I-TECH India organized a Continuing Medical Education (CME) training that took place on 25 July 2019 and was based on recent national antiretroviral therapy (ART) technical guidelines. In addition to being webcast, around 120 officials attended the CME training including the Deputy Directors of SACS; Medical officers of ART centres; RIMS department heads, professors, ARTC staff, and postgraduate students; CDC officials; I-TECH India staff; and a program officer of Vihaan, Alliance India, attended the training. The program covered the code of medical ethics; gave an overview of the National AIDS control program; ART initiation and follow up; opportunistic infections in people living with HIV and their prophylaxis; resistance to ART, switching treatment, and PEP; as well as newer approaches of ART delivery, and co-infections of HIV and hepatitis B/hepatitis C.

With HIV prevalence around 1.8% among prisoners in India, inmates face a major challenge with access to antiretroviral therapy (ART) initiation and follow up. This problem with access has resulted in a loss of continuum of care and shows an urgent need for a client-cantered ART dispensation model for inmates. In January 2019, I-TECH India initiated an ART dispensation model at two prisons in Mumbai district. In May 2019, this model was expanded to the Thane district where I-TECH India, along with officials from Maharashtra AIDS Control Society, conducted joint visits for assessing feasibility. Additionally, a well-defined post-release treatment plan for all HIV-positive prison inmates was formulated to retain inmates in the HIV cascade. Currently, 42 prisoners are receiving ART services while in prison.

Due to the high number of PLHIV at the ART centre in Bhiwandi, the LFU rate is as high as 23%. I-TECH India, in coordination with multiple stakeholders, developed a strategy to lower the number of LFU cases, specifically in the migrant population because an analysis showed that 40% of the LFU cases were migrants. An analysis and review of records as well as data cleaning exercises were conducted, which resulted in a reduction in the LFU rate to 3%. This strategy is being replicated and demonstrated in other ART centres throughout the Thane district.