Persons with HIV and AIDS to work together
The Ghana Health Service (GHS) has developed documents and guidelines to encourage people living with HIV and AIDS to work with health officials in hospitals to render services to those who are newly infected.
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Dubbed, “Model of Hope”, the documents and guidelines enable people living with HIV and AIDS to take ownership of their own care in order to complement the work of health workers.
The model of hope
“The model of hope is like the situation of somebody, who has gone through the whole system, and has had experience but still is on medication and using his or her experience to guide others who are coming in.
“So, they will complement the roles of nurses and health workers and not coming to take over the work of nurses,” the acting Programme Manager of the National AIDS/STIs Control Programme, Dr Stephen Ayisi Addo, disclosed to the Daily Graphic in an interview at the just-ended 20th International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2014) in Melbourne, Australia.
Dr Addo explained that what those people would do essentially would be to help pick folders, share their experiences with those newly infected as to the medication and the side effects they were likely to experience. “They will tell them what they went through and how to encourage them not to give up when they have challenges.”
Background
Giving a background of the model, he said it was premised on the idea of peer review and support, recognising that AIDS could not be tackled only on the perspective of a disease, which the health system would attend to, “But because there is more to it, to give people psycho-social support, care and support. It is also good to build the capacity of the people who have the disease to take care of themselves.”
Dr Addo admitted that there were a lot of social and cultural components, adding that the stigma associated with HIV was more as compared to other diseases such as leprosy, “and so the stigma is high in the social and cultural aspects.”
Capacity building
He explained that the idea was to equip people living with HIV and AIDS to be in the position to take care of themselves beyond the health worker, citing the cases of asthmatic and diabetic patients as groups of people who knew their conditions and were able to take care of themselves in case of emergency.
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“So, the whole idea is that this person who is accessing care for life, must first of all own the condition, must break the cycle of stigma and discrimination, must be willing to do something about it beyond what the healthcare providers offer,” he further explained.
Peer support
He saw the model of hope concept as a peer support system by the persons living with HIV and AIDS and an empowerment so that they contribute more to their care and over time, they own their condition.
Asked when the model would take off, Dr Addo explained that in some health facilities, the practice was already in place, though informal, and that the GHS was working on formalising it.
He said because they were not health professionals, steps were in place to train them as trainers depending on the availability of funds.
Numbers
Touching on the number of people living with HIV and AIDS in Ghana, Dr Addo said there was an estimated number of 224,448 cases out of which those with their CD4 counts below 350 were put on the anti-retroviral therapy.
CD4 are a type of white blood cells that fight infection and their count indicates the stage of HIV or AIDS in a patient.
He said currently Ghana was revising its guidelines and when that was done, the number would be reviewed from the current 350 to 500, thereby roping in more people.
“This is based on a study that starting treatment early ensures survival. Our aim at the end of the day is to prevent people from dying. Also, the current data shows that more people would be well when they start earlier,” Dr Addo told the Daily Graphic.
Writer’s Email: severious.dery@graphic.com.gh