Ama Lay Counsellors is a comic book - available in English and Zulu – which tells the stories of three MSF lay counselors, Lindiwe, Gloria, and Sanele, who work in MSF’s ‘Bending the Curves’ project in King Cetshwayo District in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
MSF started this HIV/TB project in 2011, with the aim of reducing HIV & TB incidence, mortality and morbidity in a high prevalence area. Working in partnership with the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Health, MSF has progressively introduced a number of community and facility-based activates dedicated to increasing the update of HIV/TB testing, counselling and enhancing access to treatment.
Several of these initiatives are run by lay counsellors, who are trained to carry out basic health care services, but who are not medical professionals.
It is in large part thanks to the works of lay counsellors and other lay health workers that the ‘Bending the Curves’ project achieved the UNAIDS targets of 90-90-90 in 2019, one year ahead of the 2020 goal, with results of 90-94-95: 90% of people living with HIV know their status, 94% of those were on antiretroviral treatment and 95% of those had a suppressed viral load.
Illustrated by South African comic illustrator Warren Raysdorf.
Ama Lay Counsellors is available in English (below) and Zulu