ICAP: Empowering Health for 15 Years

A worker in the testing lab at
a clinic. Kigali, Rwanda
A health care worker
examines a child. Cameroon
Staff workers test blood samples
at the laboratory at Muranga
District Hospital. Kenya
As the global response to the HIV
epidemic gathered steam, ICAP
launched major multi-year initiatives
to support government partners in a
dozen of countries as they wrestled
with the complex challenges of
scaling up specialized, ongoing care
and treatment services across health
facilities ranging from large hospitals
to remote health centers.
During this period, ICAP worked
with in-country partners in sub-
Saharan Africa to bring familyfocused
HIV care and treatment to
settings as diverse as the Tanzanian
coast and Lesotho highlands. For
the first time, pregnant women were
able to access HIV testing, care, and
treatment services for themselves
and their families under a single roof.
For the first time, children could be
born HIV-free. For the first time,
men and women with HIV could
regain their health and provide for
their families.
ICAP worked diligently to make
its ambitious vision a reality. It
engaged partners to renovate
facilities and laboratories, train
health workers, strengthen
monitoring and evaluation, put in
place supply management systems
for consistent supply of medicines,
launch peer education programs, and
better integrate community-based
organizations into the HIV response.
And ICAP provided technical
assistance to ministries of health
to develop national HIV clinical
guidelines, launch national training
programs, establish model centers for
clinical training and programmatic
innovation, conduct evaluations
to improve service quality—all in
support of building an effective HIV
response suited to the populations in
need.
By 2006, ICAP’s large-scale,
collaborative efforts had achieved
what had seemed impossible only
a few years before: 100,000 people
living with HIV had initiated
lifesaving treatment through ICAPsupported
programs.
By 2010, that number had jumped to
more than half a million.
And today it stands at nearly 1.5
million.