Integrated Management of HIV and NCDs within the Primary Health Care in the South African Context: A Comprehensive Literature Review

Low and middle-income countries, including South Africa, are facing a challenge of the dual burden of chronic communicable and non-communicable diseases, which again pose a challenge to the improvement of patients’ clinical outcomes in the primary health care facilities. The introduction of innovative intervention to address the dual burden in South Africa created a challenge on nurses working at primary health care facilities to acquire a new set of skills to improve patients’ clinical outcomes. HIV programmes have shown great improvement in patients with HIV. However, there is still much to be done to improve NCD management. The aim of this review was to understand the status of integrated management of HIV and NCDs in South Africa and document the strengths and opportunities to sustain the implementation of integrated management of HIV and NCDs in PHC facilities in South Africa.

A comprehensive literature review of integrated management of HIV and NCDs in South Africa was conducted and complemented with a hand search literature in the form of policy documents and guidelines that were obtained from the National Department of Health.

A total of 17 out of 183 documents were analysed. Various strengths and opportunities, such as availability of approved guidelines and standardised training for nurses, are essential for the sustainability of integrated management of HIV and NCDs in Primary Health care facilities in South Africa.

The CLR revealed that South Africa has strengths and opportunities which can be used to sustain integrated management of HIV and NCDs at PHC facilities and develop a model to strengthen the implementation of integrated management of HIV and NCDs in other provinces with minimal resources.