Santa — Child Aid Development Foundation International (CADFIN) has asked government to speed up the process of delivering HIV testing Kits to Districts as the demand for testing is very high. Program Director responsible for Monitoring and Evaluation for CADFIN, Joanes Toulac Jang made the call ahead of the training of Community members as Lay HIV Counselors that took place on the 18th and 19th July 2013 in Santa Sub-Division. He said people in the district now have the hunger to get tested, but they are demotivated when they are sent back home from Health centres because of lack of HIV testing kits. "Government has the responsibility to directly deliver HIV testing kits to districts, but the problem has been the late delivery of the kits to the testing centres which forces people to go back home without getting tested," said Joanes Toulac Jang. CADFIN is also advocating for for the quick supply of HIV testing Kits so as to meet up the growing number of pregnant women accessing PMTCT as the health centers prepare to start implementing the new WHO guideline Option B+ a lifelong treatment that is administered to expectant mothers living with HIV at 14 weeks of their pregnancy irrespective of their CD4 count. The program Director explained that CADFIN believe in using community members to solve community problems. One of these strategies is to use Peer Educators as HIV counselors. 'We use the peer educators to scale up our intervention in relation to HIV prevention and PMTCT follow up of loss cases in Santa'. Peer education is deemed an effective mechanism of reaching as many people as possible especially with regard to PMTCT awareness because it is an approach that involves sharing information among ‘peers’- who intend share to community members and people of equal standing in society; belonging to the same societal group based on age, grade or status. The training was aimed at improving community knowledge, skills, and confidence in providing adherence and psychosocial support services throughout the PMTCT spectrum of prevention, care and support.
Posted on: Thu, 08 Aug 2013 20:43:18 +0000
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