The Founding of TingatheDrs. Saeed Ahmed and Maria Kim were members of the first class of the BIPAI Pediatric AIDS Corps in 2006, now the Texas Children's Global Health Corps. During their first year in Malawi they focused on clinical activities and systems improvements including simplifying clinical guidelines for initiating HIV-infected children on ART, training Malawian providers on managing clinical care of HIV-infected children, improving inpatient services for critically ill children, and development of an outpatient approach for the management of malnutrition.
Despite improvements in clinical care of HIV-infected and exposed children, Saeed and Maria continued to be concerned that many children had advanced clinical disease at the time of presentation. At the Ministry of Health sites they supported, less than 50 children were enrolled in care in 2007, while thousands of children were missing from care. To address this issue, Saeed and Maria developed Tingathe, an innovative program that uses community health workers to improve identification and enrollment into care of HIV-infected and exposed children. Within a few years, Tingathe's activities increased enrollment at participating government clinics over 50-fold, making them the largest pediatric HIV clinics in the country outside of the main Baylor Center of Excellence. |
Saeed and Maria remain passionate and committed to supporting the provision of high-quality health care in Malawi through empowering health professionals and communities with the knowledge, skills, and confidence they need to meet the country's challenges.
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Tingathe's Timeline
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2006Baylor and Ministry of Health Partnership
Founding of Baylor-Malawi and the country's first stand-alone pediatric HIV clinic, the Baylor College of Medicine-Abbott Fund Children's Clinical Centre of Excellence-Malawi |
2007Tingathe Program Launch
Tingathe (“Together We Can”) starts as an outreach program with funding from the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative, BIPAI and Bristol-Myers Squib |
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2010Reaching Mothers and Babies
Based on Tingathe's success in improving identification and enrollment into care of HIV-infected children, it receives USAID funding to improve PMTCT services in Malawi through implementation of the Community Health Workers as a Bridge between PMTCT, EID and Pediatric HIV Services project |
2014Expansion to Southeast Malawi
Tingathe support expands to over 130 health facilities, and the program assists the Ministry of Health to pilot the use of HIV Diagnostic Assistants (HDAs) for improved testing access throughout the country |
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2016Supporting Malawi to Achieve the UNAIDS 90-90-90 Targets
Tingathe begins provision of comprehensive, high-quality HIV services in more than 60 health facilities in four districts with USAID funding through the Innovative HIV Services for Malawi project |
2018Celebrating 10 Years of Tingathe
Key achievements include:
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Tingathe is proud to share its programming experience, approaches, and resources. Access our training curriculum, presentations, M&E tools, and other job aids in the Toolkit.
