Hope Clinic Lukuli works with national governments and their development partners

The community served by Hope Clinic Lukuli is quite typical of the communities which are the subject of donor-funded programmes throughout Uganda and sub-Saharan Africa. The households have many concerns in their day to day lives and in relation to their future plans. A source of income to pay rent on their house; food they grow or income to buy the food and clean water they need; education for children including the 'extras' that schools funded under Universal Primary Education still demand; nutrition advice; help in managing fevers or diarrhoea; information and items for family planning; accurate diagnosis and affordable medicines; HIV and STD prevention information; testing for these - care, supportive advice and the necessary treatment for STDs, HIV or AIDS.

However, whilst national policy guidelines and strategies at one level may encompass all these topics, most countries work with donors on very separate elements of this list. Despite the Paris Declaration for country ownership and donor coordination, the donor 'doing HIV' still has separate programmes for adult prevention, for PMTCT services, for HIV testing, for family planning, for ARVs or for STD testing and treatment. That same donor may also support FP, but the FP funds can't be used for PMTCT as they only fund the commodity, not the staff.

We ask for your help as donors, and as workers in programmes and country missions to fund comprehensively. The US Global Health Initiative (GHI) is tying to combine the plans of FP, Malaria, TB and HIV. Local Capacity Development programmes such as the New Partners Initiative helped the whole NGO/ implementer, not just the staff on a specific vertical implementation. Hope Clinic's hosted referrals has had to manage the coordination of these different services in Makindye as donor programmes are not automatically set up to do this.

Hope Clinic is local - it was founded by and is situated in the community it serves. Hope Clinic is indigenous as it has 22 employees, all Ugandans, and majority of the founders and board are Ugandans. It is a local provider of technical assistance as it formed referral networks with midwives and fever testing sites to help them access PMTCT services and malaria diagnosis. Our dispenser is in Korea in September 2011 delivering her abstract, and Hope Clinic's model was a poster presentation at the IAS 2010 conference in Vienna. For donors we are a proven, capable partner.

For PEPFAR, for Belgian BTC, for Kampala District, for MoH RH/FP, for UNITAID, for USAID, for the community.

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