EXPLORING THE ROLE OF TASK SHIFTING IN THE MANAGEMENT OF HIV IN MALAWI. A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

Human resources have been a huge challenge in the Malawi health sector. Rapid population growth, Low training rates, attrition to other countries and HIV and aids have been attributed as the main factors. This paper evaluated the extent which task shifting has been applied and its impact on HIV patients care quality, access to HIV care service and patient outcomes. The researcher conducted a critical review of literature, search terms and descriptors were used to search the PubMed and google scholar database for related studies. 308 studies were identified and were evaluated using the PRISMA approach and all studies were also critiqued for relevance using CASP tools. In the end 11 papers were eligible for review and have been included in this literature review. The paper concludes that task shifting has been extensively applied in HIV programming. The paper highlights that there have been two main types of task shifting that have been applied in Malawi. These have been noted as delegation where tasks have moved from doctors to non-physician clinician, nurses, CHWs. The other type been through the creation of two new cadres of lay counselor and patient supporter (expert client). Task shifting has been a huge enabler of HIV care services scale up. It has also helped to improve access while maintaining the quality of care. However, the success of Task shifting should not be fade the need to further develop HRH in Malawi.