The HIV policy in Kenya recommends routine HIV
testing and counselling to all clients attending public health
facilities to facilitate early diagnosis and enrolment to care and
treatment. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends
task shifting in HIV testing and counselling to ease the burden on
medical health workers. There is limited evidence on
implementation of task shifting in a public health facilities in
Kenya.
The study aimed 1)to establish the perspectives of health
care providers on taskshifting in the public health facilities in
Kenya, and 2) assess client’s satisfaction with the services
offered through the task shifting model. A mixed method
approach was used; a cross sectional descriptive design was
adopted with qualitative and quantitative approaches.
Results indicated positive response among medical health
providers with regard to the task shifting; 83% of the medical
health providers described the relationship between medical and
non-medical health providers as excellent. Levels of clients’
satisfaction improved significantly with introduction of task
shifting from 50% to 70% respectively. There was also a
correlation between the number of non-medical providers who
were engaged and the annual uptake of the PITC services that
increased from 122,442 in 2010 to 209,022 in 2014.Task shifting
strategy in HIV testing and counselling was therefore found to be
feasible for scaling-up of HIV testing and counselling in the
public health facilities.