Past Programmes

Tirisanong

Anova’s Tirisanong project partners with the City of Johannesburg and the Gauteng Department of Health (DoH) to support and strengthen healthcare facilities in and around the iconic and bustling area of Soweto, regions C, D, E and G. Tirisanong supports over 70 health facilities at all levels of the health system, working closely with the DoH, providing coordination with other partners and assisting with planning and implementation of health programmes. Anova provides technical support for supply chain and pharmacy, facility and sub-district management training, and monitoring and evaluation support.

Khutso Kurhula

Khutšo Kurhula is based in the Mopani district in Limpopo, and engages in a series of health system strengthening and capacity building efforts to improve access to services as well as the overall quality of service in HIV prevention and care programmes. The Mopani district is a rural area where the population is scattered across numerous smaller villages and communities.

Cape Winelands

Anova Health Institute has supported the Western Cape Department of Health (DOH) since the roll-out of the ARV programme in 2004. Anova strives to bring innovative healthcare solutions to facilities and the most at risk and underserved communities in rural Western Cape. Anova supports DoH in seven “hotspot” clinics in the Cape Winelands and is an implementation partner for the POPART study in five clinics. The primary objective of the PopART study is to evaluate the impact of a community-level combination prevention package, which includes universal HIV testing, active linkage into care and intensified provision of ART, on population level HIV incidence.

Health4Trans

Health4Trans focuses on transgender people. We have developed transgender training manuals for clinicians working within the public and private health sectors, to provide broad access to transgender competent healthcare. The Health4Trans Facebook profile hopes to serve as a physical, sexual and mental health support social media platform for the transgender and gender non-conforming community of Southern Africa. Its goal is to do so, by using content, information and other resources supplied by Trans and gender non-conforming individuals, themselves. The content is to help eliminate the stigma associated with the Trans community and aid members of this community empower themselves and one another with resources and sexual health information and available healthcare services.

Instagram page

Past Projects / Campaigns

We The Brave

WeTheBrave.co.za, a sexual health campaign was launched in June 2015, the first large scale campaign ever in South Africa to specifically address MSM. Spearheaded by Anova and funded by the Elton John AIDS Foundation (EJAF), the WeTheBrave.co.za campaign addresses both HIV prevention and treatment issues in an affirming, non-judgemental and sex positive way, which is entertaining and engaging. The campaign asks MSM to be brave enough to make healthy sexual choices like wearing a condom, getting tested regularly and knowing their status. The campaign links to Anova’s Health4Men clinical services in the public sector in all provinces through an interactive map for MSM to find their nearest gay and bisexual friendly clinic.

Young Heroes

After the success of our WeTheBrave campaign, Anova and EJAF collaborated again, this time reaching out to young men who have sex with men (YMSM) with the resources they need to make informed decisions about their sexual health. Young Heroes aims to provide information and resources that lend support to all young men who could potentially be grappling with the development of non-heterosexual identity. Online resources and technology will feature strongly as the campaign unfolds. Young Heroes is a unique, innovative and multidimensional campaign with a psycho-social focus that will incorporate social media, a series of videos, articles and content created by YMSM themselves. You can access more on our Facebook page.

Health4Women

Health4Women was a campaign dedicated to promoting access to relevant, competent and unprejudiced health services to women who have sex with women (WSW) without prejudice or discrimination in the public health sector, in partnership with the Department of Health. We trained staff in sensitisation and clinical training. We also provided a platform for WSW to engage and access relevant health information via our website and Facebook page.

Score4Life

Our Score4Life campaign offers free, safe and confidential HIV testing for men in a semi-permanent pop-up facility in the Alex Plaza shopping centre. Since its launch, over 12 500 men have tested and 913 of those tested positive. Anova in partnership with the Gauteng Department of Health and Johannesburg Health District, are seeing higher numbers of HIV-positive men between the ages of 35 and 50, which makes this demographic a key focus going forward. Testing is, however, just the first step in the HIV prevention and treatment process. To keep the channels of communication open and to provide linkages to localised services and care, participants will be issued with airtime to give them the means to access these services, regardless of their status.

PrEP4Life

Funded by EJAF, Anova launched the first South African, nurse driven and state-clinic based PrEP demonstration project ‘PrEP4life’ for MSM at its Ivan Toms Centre for Men’s Health in Woodstock, Cape Town and our Yeoville clinic in Johannesburg. Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is a pill that HIV-negative individuals take daily, that drastically reduce HIV infection. More information on PrEP can be accessed via the website PrEP4life.co.za.

Past Community Projects

Boithato

UCSF collaborated with Anova in implementing project Boithato, an evidence based HIV prevention project adapted from the Mpowerment model development and implemented in the USA and other countries in the world. This project aims to reduce HIV prevalence, encourage safer sex and constant HIV testing among MSM in the district. Ultimately, the project will build a community of empowered MSM and reduce stigma and discrimination.

The Boithato project links with Health4Men supported MSM health facilities in Nelspruit.

I Heart Isidayi, GBT Connexions and Seskhona

From 1 October 2016, in collaboration with Aurum through funding from CDC, Anova scaled up the evidence based Boithato Project into three districts, namely Ekurhuleni in Gauteng Province, eThekwini and UMgungundlovu Districts in KwaZulu-Natal Province. The empowerment projects in the three districts are focused on MSM and Transgender (TG) people. With the active participation of MSM and TG community representatives, the three projects were branded GBT Connexions (Ekurhuleni) I-Heart Isidayi (Ethekwini) and Seskhona (UMgungundlovu). The GBT Connexions office is located in Benoni, I-Heart Isidayi in Durban and Seskhona office in Pietermaritzburg.

In line with the empowerment approach, standard activities are implemented across the three projects including holding regular meetings with core group members, facilitating empowerment group sessions, engaging in community dialogues, outreaching into communities, bringing MSM and TG together in large events as well as HIV testing services that include TB and STI screening. Some context specific activities will be taken on board in the coming years. It is envisioned that these projects will reduce stigma and discrimination, promote safe sex behaviours, promote regular testing and linkage to care as well as build strong and empowered communities of MSM and TG persons in the districts.

Faith

An exciting new project 'Faith' is taking HIV testing services (HTS) to another level. The project, which was born through a partnership between INERELA+ the Anova Health Institute (after securing a grant from Aids Fonds), implements religious leaders to test men for HIV and then link them to care through their congregations.

Over the next three years, Anova will manage the HTS and linkage to care, while INERLA+ will manage mobilisation and training of the religious leaders. It will be implemented in Mopani district in Limpopo Province and Soweto in Johannesburg in the Gauteng Province. HTS and antiretroviral treatment in South Africa is significantly lower among men than in women. Some reasons found for this point towards lack of time due to work commitments and fear of stigma. This project aims to address this testing gap by counselling men, including gay men and other men who have sex with men (MSM), attending religious congregations.

Past Projects & Programmes