|
|
|
Events - Aurum Care and Treatment Programme Seminar
|
|
|
Symposium for health-care workers in the Aurum HIV/TB Care and Treatment Programme
About 100 doctors, nurses and other health workers attended a two-day symposium at Glenhove Conference Centre in Melrose, Johannesburg in early July 2009, which was organised by the Aurum Institute. The symposium generated plenty of lively discussion about a wide range of challenging issues that health workers face in providing treatment and care to HIV-positive people. The symposium addressed cutting edge issues such as TB diagnosis in HIV-positive patients, bringing more HIV-positive children into treatment programmes, health worker burnout, resistance to antiretroviral treatment, and counselling sero-discordant couples.
Currently only small numbers of children in South Africa are in treatment. The South African Department of Health and PEPFAR have set a goal that 15% of those in antiretroviral treatment programmes should be children. Yet in 2007, of the estimated 65 000 children in South Africa who needed treatment, only 32 000 were in treatment programmes. Dr Beauty Oseke-Sekyere talked about the challenges of treating children, and how to make facilities more child-friendly. Health-care workers are often afraid of treating children, she said, but with the right information and support, they discover how children on treatment can thrive.
There was extensive discussion too about the emotional burden that health workers face in dealing with HIV/AIDS on a daily basis. Delegates attending the symposium spoke frankly about their own experiences of compassion fatigue and burnout. Often health-care settings fail to provide opportunities for staff to debrief, because of the national shortage of psychologists and social workers. So health workers face with the challenge of finding their own solutions to burnout. What was striking about the discussions was that many staff are in fact developing creative strategies to deal with the emotional burden of HIV/AIDS. Robin Hamilton, a clinical psychologist, spoke about the need for management to provide innovative support for health workers that moves beyond group debriefing sessions. We need to make use of new technologies such as the internet and video-conferencing, as well as telephonic debriefing and peer support.
Thobeka Dwadwa and Dr Alison Glass talked about sero-discordant couples and how to counsel them about their HIV status. Often couples find it difficult to understand how one person can be HIV positive and their partner HIV negative. Counselling, Thobeka said, needs to focus firstly on helping couples to deal with the emotional issues. A further challenge is practising safer sex to avoid infection of the HIV-negative partner. Alison pointed out that it was important to remember that sero-discordant couples may still wish to have children. So one of the issues is to provide support for such couples in falling pregnant safely and without infecting the baby.
The Aurum Institute holds symposia every six months under the auspices of the TB/HIV Care and Treatment Programme, which is funded by the US government's PEPFAR programme.
Seminar documents:
|
|
|
 |
Symposium Programme - 72KB
Managing Resistance a practical approach symposium 2 July 2009 - 1.9MB