The ESTHER network (Ensemble pour une Solidarité Thérapeutique Hospitalière En Réseau) was launched in 2002 by France, Spain, Italy and Luxembourg. The aim of ESTHER is to help partner organisations and hospitals in developing countries to optimise the treatment, care and prevention services they offer with respect to HIV. To this end twinning arrangements are entered into with European hospitals, universities and other organisations. Germany joined the network in 2004. Since January 2007, the project has been coordinating the German contribution to the initiative on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

The German contribution aims to improve the availability and quality of and access to HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care, and to mitigate the consequences of HIV/AIDS in selected partner countries. The regional focus of twinning arrangements is on African countries in which German development cooperation is already active in the health sector. The twinning arrangements take their lead from the development strategies of the partner countries and the international community. Applications can be submitted by both German hospitals and universities and by hospitals in partner countries.

The German contribution to ESTHER can support the following aspects of hospital and organisational twinning arrangements on request:

• Producing expert reports, providing advisory services and ensuring technical backstopping
• Providing further training in selected partner countries and in Germany
• Providing grants to organisations in partner countries (for instance for groups of people living with HIV/AIDS and hospitals)
• In some cases conducting joint research activities with partners (joint application and implementation)
  

For instance the project is promoting a hospital twinning arrangement between the HIV Centre of the University of Frankfurt am Main and the Karabong Clinic of the Mafeteng District Hospital in Lesotho. During the two-year promotion period the hospitals exchange views and experience on quality management, research and training, and improve the technical exchange of views with other GIZ (former GTZ) cooperation partners. This ought to enhance the quality of AIDS treatment available. The objective of the twinning arrangement is that in future the Karabong Clinic will be able to operate as a regional centre of excellence for AIDS treatment, the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, care in the field of HIV and training for health service staff, thus upgrading the quality standards in regional medical services relating to HIV.

The direct promotion via GIZ is linked to other instruments of German development cooperation and development-policy research initiatives. The involvement, for instance, of Integrated Experts from the Centrum für Internationale Migration und Entwicklung (CIM) in the twinning arrangements can enhance the effectiveness of the intervention. GIZ can also provide support for parallel research programmes.

You can download all relevant documents from the website of the European ESTHER Allicance: