Executive Summary - Assignment Example

Women and HIV in Prison; Enhancing Care and Quality of Life’ Executive Summary: Healthcare Project for Female Prisoners: The Purpose of the Project:The purpose of this project is to provide improved health care facilities to the female prisoners. It has been observed that many countries lack properly strategized HIV prevention, treatment and support programs. Therefore, considering the various factors and their consequences faced by the female prisoners; this program is strategized to meet the various needs of the female prisoners suffering from HIV.

It is a known fact that usually healthcare programs fail to meet the gender-specific needs in prison. Studies have shown that women prisoners are more infected by HIV and drug abuse as compare to male prisoners (Dolan et al, 2007). They have been found more exposed to gender based sexual assaults; such female prisoners may found suffering from personality and behaviour disorders, drug use, and unsafe practices such as tattooing with many other disorders that may threat the security of other people around them.

Target Audience of the Project: The project is designed to target the female prisoners as this group has been found more prone to gender-based violence and do not receive any or special treatments in prison. To provide quality healthcare services to female prisoners suffering from HIV has become as a challenge for the correctional authorities (Plugge, 2006). Female prisoners constitute a small fraction of population imprisoned. Different females have been found imprisoned due to different reasons.

A majority of female prisoners have been found engaged in drug use by injecting the large amounts of seductive and, on the other hand, majority of other female prisoners have been found HIV carriers. Such women need psychological help, social support and quality healthcare facilities to help them overcome their health issues and to infuse positivity in their minds (Rickford, 2003). It should be kept in mind that the current healthcare programs were initially designed for male inmates as they hold the largest population in jails all around the world and especially in American prisons (Plugge, 2006).

All over the world, female prisoners constitute about 5% of the total population imprisoned (Rickford, 2003). The Benefits of the Program: The program is intended to help the female prisoners suffering from HIV. This program is tailored to meet their social, psychological and healthcare needs in the period of distress. Few of the benefits of this program are: It would help in providing information to the female prisoners on HIV. This program would create awareness on how to prevent HIV transmission, treatment process, testing methods and how the risk of HIV can be minimized.

The program would help the female prisoners to get a free HIV testing facility along with counselling services. The program would overall benefit the female inmates in diagnosing and treating the HIV, overcoming the other STDs and other diseases that may rise from the uses of drugs especially injections. The program is focused on benefiting the overall health of the female inmates especially their diets and adopting measures that would help them to overcome their nutritional deficiencies. The program is also focused on providing palliative care to terminally ill female prisoners along with facilitating post-exposure prophylaxis to those female prisoners who are already at risk of HIV.

The Budget Justification: This program would run on funds collected from government and semi-government institutions. To meet the healthcare requirements of female patients; charities and promotional campaigns would be launched soon to meet the financial needs of the program. Awareness programs would be launched in colleges and universities to collect funds from the students as well as different marketing strategies would be incorporated to meet the budge requirements and to help people know about the cause.

Program Evaluation: The program would be evaluated on the following basis: How soon can we extend our help to HIV positive and terminally ill female patients? Female prisoners in jails would be encouraged to come forward and help us in providing better healthcare facilities to HIV and AIDS patients. Their involvement in the program would set a milestone for us to evaluate the success of the program. The program would be further evaluated on the change in behaviour of female inmates and how many of the females inmates are willing to quit the drug use.

The percentage of positivity in their behaviour and overall health issues. References: Dolan J., Kite B., Aceijas C., Stimson G.V. (2007). HIV in prison in low income and middle-income countries. Lancet Infectious Diseases, 7: 32-43 Plugge E. (2006). The health of women in prison; Study Findings. Dept. of Public Health. Oxford University Rickford, D., (2003). Troubled Inside: Responding to the Mental Health Needs of Women in Prison, Prison Reform Trust, , pp. 4 and 17.