SOUTH AFRICA: Depression overwhelms AIDS caregivers
JOHANNESBURG, 12 June 2006 (PlusNews) - The South Africa Depression and Anxiety Group (SADAG) has found that 89 percent of home-based HIV/AIDS caregivers in the northern province of Limpopo and the eastern province of Mpumalanga suffer from depression.
SADAG founder and spokeswoman Zane Wilson said her organisation would be holding a workshop on 21 June to help more than 300 caregivers in the two provinces cope with their work.
"If our home-based care workers are themselves not coping with the stigma of AIDS and depression, then how can they be expected to help the patients they care for daily?" the government agency, BuaNews, quoted Wilson as saying.
SADAG, founded in 1995, became the country's first NGO to examine the issue of AIDS-related depression among patients and caregivers in rural areas.
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