South Africa is committed to attaining the UNAIDS 909090 targets to control the HIV epidemic through quality comprehensive health services and use of highly effective antiretroviral treatment (ART). The principal goal of ART is to attain and maintain viral suppression, which will decrease morbidity and mortality from HIV as well as improve the quality of life for clients living with HIV.

Recent developments in health practices that were once in the full control of healthcare professionals and can now be safely self-administered have created a shift in thinking about how individuals engage in self-care. New commodities and drug regimens for self-management and self-testing, combined with promoting and encouraging self-awareness of one’s own health has the potential to increase access to and reach of services and move health systems towards the goal of universal health care.

Global action to combat HIV/AIDS has had an immense impact in the African Region. By the end of 2017, 15.3 million people living with HIV (PLHIV) in the African Region were accessing life-saving antiretroviral drugs (ARVs), representing 70% of the 21.7 million people accessing antiretrovirals (ARV) globally.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the inadequacy of investments in public health, the persistence of profound economic and social inequalities and the fragility of many key global systems and approaches.

Given the epic dimensions of the emergency, the world needs unity and solidarity—led by a large-scale, coordinated and comprehensive health response, and a focus on the needs of developing countries. Our decades-long fight against HIV offers essential lessons.

To mark International Self-Care Day, Population Services International and partners under the Self-Care Trailblazers Working Group are sharing a new Quality of Care Framework for Self-Care to help health systems monitor and support clients accessing health care on their own—without hindering clients’ ability to do so. Adapted from the Bruce-Jain family planning quality of care framework, the Quality of Care for Self-Care includes five domains and 41 standards that can be applied to a broad range of primary health care approaches to self-care.

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