The National AIDS and STI Control Programme (NASCOP) together with partners started the VCT Programme in the year 2000. By then we only had 3 registered sites compared to the current 900 sites.

The National VCT Guidelines were developed whereby all sites must be registered before operationalization in accordance with minimum standards set by the VCT Steering Committee. Since then a lot has been achieved in areas of training of counselors where over 2000 counselors have been certified by NASCOP.A total number of over 2 Million clients have passed through our VCT sites. At least every District now has over 5 VCT sites as per the 2004 target but the new target of 2 sites per Division is far from being achieved by most Districts.

National data collection tools from the site level to the National level have been developed and are in use. Quality assurance through supervision for counselors and Q/A/Q/C for Lab has been on going.

The challenges in this Programme include monitoring of Quality as we continue to register more and more sites. Distribution of sites is quite poor as most sites – over 70% are found in the urban areas. This Quality has to be ensured all the time by all levels, from the site level to the National level. Most rural areas have to be served through mobile outreaches- (MVCT). Shortage of counselors in hard to reach areas also is another challenge and sites have continued to close in these areas hampering the flow of services. VCT counselors have also continued to offer dual roles and this means that most sites remain closed in such areas due to shortage of health workers.

The systems of Flow and Distribution of test kits is still a challenge in many areas and some sites sometimes have to close between months as they wait for test kits to be supplied.

In some areas there is no space for proper client flow and this hinders registering new sites. This is especially in the busy hospitals that were built some time back.

Objectives

The main objectives of voluntary counseling and testing (VCT)