CMMB South Africa

In 2000, CMMB partnered with the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) to establish a national AIDS Office and launch community-level HIV/AIDS initiatives in every health district of South Africa and communities in Botswana, Swaziland, Lesotho, and Namibia. CMMB’s capacity to build and support programs was recognized in the 2006 UNAIDS Best Practices Publication: A Faith-Based Response to HIV in Southern Africa: The Choose to Care Initiative.  The program seeded a network of HIV care and support organizations which now provide antiretroviral therapy and HIV prevention services to millions.  Since then, CMMB has diversified its country and regional Southern Africa portfolio to address HIV/AIDS prevention, tuberculosis (TB) case detection and follow-up, and the care of orphans and vulnerable children.

CMMB South Africa operates under the leadership of Dr. Malebo Maponyane, MBCHB, D.P.H., and receives more than $3 million USD in annual support from a variety of donors, including CDC, Global Fund/Right to Care and several private donors.

HIV/AIDS

Today in South Africa, prevention is a key aspect of the fight against a growing HIV epidemic. The adult HIV prevalence is one of the highest in the world, and there are an estimated 5.7 million men, women, and children living with HIV. CMMB South Africa, working with the government of the Republic of South Africa and local partners, implements two HIV prevention programs: Men Taking Action™ and voluntary medical male circumcision.

Recognizing that men may influence actions taken by their wives, female partners and children, CMMB’s CDC-funded, five-year Men Taking Action (MTA) program aggressively targets men for education on the prevention of HIV/AIDS transmission in Eastern Cape, South Africa.  Building on the success of the MTA program in Zambia, MTA South Africa began as a male-focused home-based counseling and testing program (HBHCT) in the Eastern Cape Province in partnership with the Diocese of Port Elizabeth. CMMB has pioneered this community-based methodology, serving as one of the first NGOs offering HBCT in rural areas.  CMMB’s home-based care and counseling and testing field workers work with men as partners in their family’s health, encouraging them to get themselves and their family tested for HIV. In FY2010 and FY11, the program tested and counseled 11,660 men and 6,518 women for HIV, and reached more than 22,000 men and women with evidenced-based HIV prevention messages in South Africa.

Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision

During FY12, CMMB South Africa is launching a comprehensive medical male circumcision (MMC) HIV prevention program for rural and under-served Sisonke District in the Province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). The project aims to deliver facility- and outreach-based safe, quality-assured medical male circumcision services to 80 percent of the eligible male population in the Sisonke District over five years. The goal of the CDC-supported project is to reduce HIV incidence and overall HIV acquisition risk through sexual transmission in the Sisonke District of KwaZulu-Natal by introducing and scaling-up medical male circumcision. The program will circumcise approximately 300,000 by its conclusion, with about 12,000 men circumcised in Year 1. The men will receive MC services as part of a comprehensive HIV prevention package that includes HIV testing and counseling, STI screening, and HIV prevention counseling.

Orphans and Vulnerable Children

Currently, there are more than 2.5 million orphaned children living in South Africa, half of whom are AIDS orphans.  CMMB has partnered with Christ the King Parish in Musina to provide an after-school program for Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC).  In 2009 and 2010, the program cared for and fed more than 4,000 children.