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The following glossary provides a selection of terms relating to Local Government responses to HIV/AIDS that have been used in the Handbook. This is not an exhaustive glossary of HIV/AIDS or local governance terms.
AIDS (Acquired ImmunoDeficiency Syndrome): The late stage of infection caused by a virus, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).
Accountability: The ability to call public officials, private employers or service providers to account, requiring that they be answerable for their policies, actions and use of funds.
Activity: The discrete, specific actions or sets of actions that answer the question: “How will a project reach the objective?” Each activity should start with a verb – e.g., conduct four training courses.
Antiretroviral (ARV): A substance, drug, or process that destroys a retrovirus (such as HIV), or suppresses its replication. Often used to describe a drug active against HIV.
Antiretroviral treatment (ART): A treatment that may prevent HIV from damaging the immune system.
Care: Activities providing some level of health services to those living with HIV/AIDS (e.g., home-based care programs).
Civil society organisation (CSO): Non-governmental groups that provide public services. CSOs may include community based organizations (CBO), faith-based organizations (FBO), trade unions, business associations, foundations, academic institutions and the media.
Confidentiality: Keeping information private. This is an important component of voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) and treatment services.
Cost effectiveness: A measure of the comparative efficiency of discrete strategies and methods for achieving the same objective.
Continuum of care: Establishment of an experience of continuity for users of care services across the different locations where care is provided. This would mean that services ranging from social grants to medical treatment to psychosocial support are knitted into an integrated framework for improvement of access to care.
Discrimination: Treating people unfairly and unjustly on the basis of their belonging, or being perceived to belong, to a particular group. (refer to
stigma)
Disbursement: The process or method by which money is provided to recipients (e.g., LGA, CSO) from another organisation (e.g., National AIDS Council, Donor, Central Government)
Evaluation: The periodic measurement of the outcomes and ultimately the impact of a program. Evaluation asks: “What have we achieved?” Frequently evaluation uses program monitoring data, but it also involves a specific and often independent program of research.
Fiscal decentralisation: The decentralization of government expenditure and revenue-raising authority to local government structures in line with their allocated functional responsibilities.
Focal point: A person that has agreed to take an active role in addressing a particular issue--in this case HIV/AIDS--in their area or department of work. For example, a focal point in the Education Department may take responsibility for overseeing HIV/AIDS mainstreaming in the education sector, and agree to act as a liaison with local CSOs working with children.
Functional integration: Integration at the points of delivery of the health services, to ensure a continuum of engagement with systems of service delivery, recognising that integration must primarily be oriented around utility. It also involves development of referral networks and consistency of norms and standards of practice across functionally related services.
Goals: A broad statements of intent. They should be phrased as statements in the present tense – e.g., reduce the impact of AIDS on affected communities.
Goods: Ready made materials including equipment, consumables, medicines and food supplements.
Grants: Financial support to HIV/AIDS activities (e.g., school fees for orphans, support for starting an income generating activity for PLWHA).
HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus): A virus that steadily weakens the body's defense (immune) system until it can no longer fight off infections such as pneumonia, diarrhoea, tumours and other illnesses. All of which can be part of AIDS (Acquired ImmunoDeficiency Syndrome). Unable to fight back, most people die within three years of the first signs of AIDS appearing. Most of all HIV infections have been transmitted through unprotected sexual intercourse with someone who is already infected with HIV. HIV can also be transmitted by infected blood or blood products (as in blood transfusions), by the sharing of contaminated needles, and from an infected woman to her baby before birth, during delivery, or through breast-feeding.
Horizontal decentralisation: Delegation of decision making powers, functions and resources by the LGA leadership to mandated committees and structures within LGA.
Immune deficiency: A breakdown or inability of certain parts of the immune system to function, thus making a person susceptible to certain diseases which they would not ordinarily develop.
Indicators: measures of progress towards achieving goals. These can be short or longer term and can reflect process or progress – e.g., 20% of health care workers trained in syndromic management each year.
Inputs: Inputs are the resources that the project "consumes" in the course of undertaking the activities. Typically they will be human resources, money, materials, equipment and time.
Integrated development planning (IDP): Development of a single development plan for a LGA which incorporates inputs from all sectors of that government at that level. It also refers to integration of development plans from lower level tiers of government into the development plans of higher levels (e.g., municipal plans into district plans).
Integrated services: A general term to refer to services which require inputs from different departments and partners of LGA, but which are interrelated service from the perspective of service users (e.g., health and welfare services).
Intergovernmental relations: Relations, communications and operational co-operation agreements between different domains of government at the same level of government and also across the tiers of government (e.g., provincial-district).
Intergovernmental structures: Structures within government which are designed to support intergovernmental relations and coordinated functioning between systems.
Local government authority (LGA): The constitutionally established government structures that operate at the level of formal government closest to communities.
Mainstreaming HIV/AIDS: Embedding HIV/AIDS response in existing development programmes rather than making it a completely separate issue.
Mitigation: Activities designed to reduce the impact of the epidemic (e.g., provision of school fees, food and/or clothing to children in a household affected by HIV/AIDS, strengthening of social safety nets, etc.)
Monitoring: The routine assessment of ongoing activities and progress. Monitoring asks: “What are we doing?” Monitoring covers all aspects of program activity and ideally involves a plan for systematically collecting key program information relating to inputs, activities/processes and outputs.
Multisectoral response: Responses from various sectors which are designed to include the efforts of different government departments.
Network: Consists of individuals and/or organizations willing to assist one another or collaborate to achieve common goals. A network can rapidly disseminate information - lessons, innovations, techniques, ideas, news, requests, questions. A network may give its participants a strong sense of solidarity and connection.
Objectives: Statements of what needs to be done to achieve a goal – e.g., to improve health service delivery to affected communities.
Outputs: Indications that something has been done – e.g., workshop held, pamphlet developed, condoms distributed. The tangible results that the project management team should be able to guarantee. Outputs are generally delivered within specified time frame.
PLWHA: People Living with HIV/AIDS. The term may also be used to refer to those affected by HIV/AIDS, i.e. family members.
Partnership: An open relationship among different partners, whose strength lies in the diverse but complementary contributions that each one makes toward achieving a common objective.
Performance-based monitoring: A management tool that emphasizes how goals are being achieved over time. The aim is to determine the relevance of objectives, efficiency, effectiveness, impact and sustainability so as to incorporate lessons learned into the decision-making process.
Policy: A document setting out an organisation’s official position on a particular issue.
Procurement: The way of purchasing resources in a transparent and cost effective manner.
Project Purpose/ Outcome – The anticipated effect that the project will achieve by delivering the planned outputs. There is a tendency for this to be expressed in terms of a "change in behavior" of a group or institution; the project outputs are expected to facilitate this change.
Services: Technical expertise purchased, whether individuals or a group of people (like an CSO or another firm).
Split functions of government: Functions of government which are performed in parts at different levels of decentralisation (e.g., salaries for VCT staff paid at one level, and laboratory costs at another level).
Stakeholders: Those individuals and organizations affected (negatively or positively) by the outcome of an activity/project and/or those who can affect the outcome of a proposed intervention (e.g., PLWHA, youth, Unions, health care providers, local leaders, etc.)
Stigma: the holding of derogatory/negative social attitudes or display of hostile or discriminatory behavior towards members of a group (e.g., PLWHA) on account of their membership of that group.
Strategy: The means employed to reach the objective – e.g., advocacy, education, care etc.
Syndromic management: a method for diagnosing STI (sexually transmitted infections) based on the identification of syndromes, which are combinations of the symptoms the client reports and the signs the health care provider observes. Because of the unavailability of laboratory tests in many low-resource settings and the potential for inaccuracy when providers rely on the clinical approach alone, syndromic management is often the best approach in low-resource settings.
Unfunded mandate: A responsibility imposed by legislation on regional or local governments with no matching funding (e.g., provision of internal workplace HIV/AIDS programmes but without provision for the costs involved).
Vertical decentralization: Decentralization that occurs within sectors and departments, disconnected or not integrated with decentralization structures and frameworks in other sectors and departments.
VCT (voluntary counseling and testing) services: Voluntary HIV counseling and testing is the process by which an individual undergoes counseling to enable him/her to make an informed choice about being tested for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). This decision must be entirely the choice of the individual and he or she must be assured that the process will be confidential. VCT is a key component of both HIV prevention and care programs.
Vision (and Mission Statements): statements used to reflect a commitment to action to achieve a desirable state – e.g., we will strive for an AIDS-free generation.
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