The Total Control of the Epidemic Yuexi County Project in Yuexi County, Liangshan Yi Minority Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province , (“TCE Yuexi”) is sponsored by AIDS Healthcare Foundation and jointly implemented by Humana People to People (HPP)， Yuexi County’s Women's Federation, Public Health Bureau, AIDS Prevention Office, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Maternity and Child Care Hospital. The Project is a 1year project beginning in October 2015.

Liangshan is a high HIV infection rate area. In China, the HIV infection rate among the general population is 0.05%, but in selected counties in Liangshan, the rate is up to 3%-8%. In some counties in Liangshan, the hospital delivery rate is as low as  25%-55%, the infant mortality rate and maternal mortality rate are up to 5-6 times higher than national average. The project aims at increasing the villagers’ awareness of HIV knowledge and decreasing HIV infection through home visits, face-to-face health education, and promoting the safe and fast rapid detection method “Home Based Testing”, and at mobilizing pregnant women to adapt institutional delivery, and helping the community to unite around taking control of HIV/AIDS. The project reaches out to and benefits about 4000 villagers and 20 women groups.

HPP implemented HIV health education since May 2014 in Yuexi County, and the health education and home testing activities have entered the 2^nd year since the project started. The current project covers 6 administrative villages in 1 township. We hired local people and train them to be community health workers. They visit villagers door-to-door and promote basic HIV/AIDS knowledge and daily precautionary measures to the villagers. They mobilize pregnant women to get antenatal care and institutional delivery. They distribute condoms and teach couples with people living with HIV/AIDS and other risk population groups how to use them. As many of the local Yi people speak limited Mandarin and have little schooling, door-to-door home visit health education is the most effective, straightforward, and acceptable method, through which people truly understand knowledge about HIV/AIDS and eventually opt for counseling and home-based testing.

Meanwhile, the Home Testing provided by the project in remote rural areas is very helpful to discover new HIV infections, raise people’s self protection and then contributes to reducing the spread of HIV . Usually, villagers need to spend 1-5 hours to go to township clinics on foot due to the poor transportation. Because of this, many do not want to spend time and money to do the test. Home Testing effectively solves the problem where the ordinary testing system could not reach to .

In the past short four months, the project achieved good result by the combined efforts of project staff, community health workers and the support of Yuexi Women's Federation, Public Health Department, AIDS Prevention Office, CDC and Maternity and Child Care Hospital. As below the details,
             

Only the people themselves can save themselves from HIV/AIDS the epidemic. Let’s work together, work hard and stand shoulder to shoulder to prevent and fight with HIV/AIDS until zero infection!


Health education


Household visiting and distributing free condoms


Field staff organizing training for women


Villagers sign the informed consent


Home testing