Like the rest of sub-Saharan Africa Zambia is in a seemingly never ending struggle with HIV and AIDS and the HBC CHIKUNI  is central to the fight against the silent disease in this area of rural Zambia.

Our vision is to improve the quality of care for the terminally ill and prevent the diseases spread by sensitizing our community especially on HIV & AIDS, but our work includes much more than that.
We are not only aiming at improving the patient's health, but also his education, status and food security, while communities and families are as well benefiting.

The project started under the Chikuni Mission Hospital and was turned into a community based project in 2000.
The idea to take this step mainly arose from the insight that involving the entire community into the struggle against HIV / AIDS will be the only way to win it in a long term perspective.

With great support from the community Chikuni Home Based Care is able to provide free medical treatment and care for the patients at their home as long as possible.
Therefore we managed to reduce some burden on the hospital, where beds were being filled by HIV patients that had opportunistic infections and were bed ridden for large periods of time before the project took off.

One of the main purposes is to improve people's access to information and education in order to help them protect themselves against the disease and sensitize the community about HIV / AIDS related issues. The result of 6 years of home based care work is a community where people can discuss openly about the silent desease  and stigma is significantly reduced.

Currently the centre offers a variety of services to more than 700 patients  living in 180 villages within its 5000 sq km catchment area that covers 3 districts; Monze, Gwembe and Choma.
Almost daily there are new people tested HIV positive and offered to become clients of Chikuni HBC