UGANDA: Home-based HIV counselling and testing in camps for internally displaced

Nairobi, 21 August 2006 (PlusNews) - The International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Northern Uganda has begun operating home-based HIV counselling and testing in ten camps for internally displaced persons in the Kitgum region.

HIV has spread rapidly in the region because the situation in the camps has changed the way people behave, said James Wanyama, senior HIV/AIDS programme manager for the IRC in Uganda. "The cultural set-up is broken up so much that people no longer operate under their traditional conservative values; it is survival of the fittest."

Entire families, displaced by the two-decade long war between the Ugandan government and Lord's Resistance Army rebels, live in tiny one-room mud huts.

In the 1980s HIV/AIDS was virtually unheard of in northern Uganda, but a lack of education, rising levels of commercial sex, and sexual and domestic violence, have pushed Kitgum's prevalence rate past nine percent, according to the government's 2004/2005 Uganda Sero Survey.

The IRC's programme aims to encourage more open discussion by sending trained counsellors - community members selected by their peers - to offer group counselling to families in their homes. Those choosing to be tested receive individual counselling followed by a rapid HIV test.

Wanyama said home-based counselling brought behaviour change to the whole family, as it encouraged them to discuss the issues surrounding HIV as a unit. "Testing in the home makes people feel more secure and helps enhance the feeling of confidentiality - if a person tests positive, they have the option of having a counsellor present when they break the news to their family."

Home-based testing and counselling also reached those unwilling to "sneak" into health centres for fear of being stigmatised, the elderly, young mothers who found it difficult to leave their families and people too ill to travel.

Regardless of test results, people were encouraged to join 'post-test clubs', where they participated in activities to help them achieve behaviour change and reduce the spread of the pandemic.

Theme (s): Care/Treatment - PlusNews,

[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]