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The South African community pharmacy sector—an untapped reservoir for delivering HIV services

Differentiated service delivery is recommended to improve the uptake of HIV testing and treatment for people living with HIV. One service delivery option yet to be fully capitalised on is community pharmacies. There are approximately 3,580 registered community pharmacies in South Africa. A total of...

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Autores principales: Nyamuzihwa, Tsitsi, Tembo, Angela, Martyn, Natalie, Venter, Francois, Maimin, Jacqueline, Houghton, Juliet, Lalla-Edward, Samanta Tresha
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10375701/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37519342
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frph.2023.1173576
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author Nyamuzihwa, Tsitsi
Tembo, Angela
Martyn, Natalie
Venter, Francois
Maimin, Jacqueline
Houghton, Juliet
Lalla-Edward, Samanta Tresha
author_facet Nyamuzihwa, Tsitsi
Tembo, Angela
Martyn, Natalie
Venter, Francois
Maimin, Jacqueline
Houghton, Juliet
Lalla-Edward, Samanta Tresha
author_sort Nyamuzihwa, Tsitsi
collection PubMed
description Differentiated service delivery is recommended to improve the uptake of HIV testing and treatment for people living with HIV. One service delivery option yet to be fully capitalised on is community pharmacies. There are approximately 3,580 registered community pharmacies in South Africa. A total of 1,110 (31%) of these pharmacies are corporate chain pharmacies located in cities and towns, the remainder are individually owned, many of which are in less populated poorer settings. Community pharmacies traditionally play a pivotal role in providing health education to the populations they serve and are the first point of contact for people seeking health services, offering more convenient opening hours and shorter waiting times than public sector clinics or private doctors. As a result, patients regularly seek a variety of sexual and reproductive health services at community pharmacies such as self-testing devices for HIV, treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, and an array of reproductive health services, spanning emergency contraception to fertility advice, often signifying HIV risk. This has presented an opportunity for community pharmacies to provide access to HIV prevention and treatment to ensure the targets for HIV services set by international agencies and local government are achieved. Despite obstacles experienced with the expansion of the community pharmacist's role, exploring the potential of pharmacies to mediate the existing challenges with HIV service delivery has emerged as an important resource. Assessing the South African communities' specific HIV treatment needs and willingness to access HIV services from community pharmacies will benefit from additional research.
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spelling pubmed-103757012023-07-29 The South African community pharmacy sector—an untapped reservoir for delivering HIV services Nyamuzihwa, Tsitsi Tembo, Angela Martyn, Natalie Venter, Francois Maimin, Jacqueline Houghton, Juliet Lalla-Edward, Samanta Tresha Front Reprod Health Reproductive Health Differentiated service delivery is recommended to improve the uptake of HIV testing and treatment for people living with HIV. One service delivery option yet to be fully capitalised on is community pharmacies. There are approximately 3,580 registered community pharmacies in South Africa. A total of 1,110 (31%) of these pharmacies are corporate chain pharmacies located in cities and towns, the remainder are individually owned, many of which are in less populated poorer settings. Community pharmacies traditionally play a pivotal role in providing health education to the populations they serve and are the first point of contact for people seeking health services, offering more convenient opening hours and shorter waiting times than public sector clinics or private doctors. As a result, patients regularly seek a variety of sexual and reproductive health services at community pharmacies such as self-testing devices for HIV, treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, and an array of reproductive health services, spanning emergency contraception to fertility advice, often signifying HIV risk. This has presented an opportunity for community pharmacies to provide access to HIV prevention and treatment to ensure the targets for HIV services set by international agencies and local government are achieved. Despite obstacles experienced with the expansion of the community pharmacist's role, exploring the potential of pharmacies to mediate the existing challenges with HIV service delivery has emerged as an important resource. Assessing the South African communities' specific HIV treatment needs and willingness to access HIV services from community pharmacies will benefit from additional research. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-07-14 /pmc/articles/PMC10375701/ /pubmed/37519342 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frph.2023.1173576 Text en © 2023 Nyamuzihwa, Tembo, Martyn, Venter, Maimin, Houghton and Lalla-Edward. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Reproductive Health
Nyamuzihwa, Tsitsi
Tembo, Angela
Martyn, Natalie
Venter, Francois
Maimin, Jacqueline
Houghton, Juliet
Lalla-Edward, Samanta Tresha
The South African community pharmacy sector—an untapped reservoir for delivering HIV services
title The South African community pharmacy sector—an untapped reservoir for delivering HIV services
title_full The South African community pharmacy sector—an untapped reservoir for delivering HIV services
title_fullStr The South African community pharmacy sector—an untapped reservoir for delivering HIV services
title_full_unstemmed The South African community pharmacy sector—an untapped reservoir for delivering HIV services
title_short The South African community pharmacy sector—an untapped reservoir for delivering HIV services
title_sort south african community pharmacy sector—an untapped reservoir for delivering hiv services
topic Reproductive Health
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10375701/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37519342
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frph.2023.1173576
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