HIV-smittede har brug for mere end blot medicin. Mangelfuld rådgivning til mennesker, der får stillet en HIV-diagnose har haft fatale konsekvenser. Ifølge sundhedsarbejdere i Uganda har et højt antal patienter udviklet sindslidelser, depression eller de har endog begået selvmord eller dræbt deres partner på grund af mangelfuld rådgivning og psykologhjælp, skriver IRIN 28. oktober 2010.
According to health workers in Gulu district, the counselling given to people with HIV is insufficient to deal with the complicated feelings and issues they face following a positive diagnosis.
“Counselling lasts less than 15 minutes when patients are given their results; they are later left on their own without follow-up counselling,” said William Odur, senior psychiatrist at Gulu Hospital. “After they are given their HIV status, a number develop mental disorders, are depressed, commit suicide or kill their partners.”
Deadly consequences
The country has had several cases of murder following HIV-positive diagnoses, including a man in the southwestern district of Rukungiri murdering his wife in 2008, the lynching of a woman in Gulu suspected of infecting a man and, in September, a 20-year-old woman in the eastern district of Soroti being sentenced to death for killing her soldier husband after she tested positive and he was negative.
“One session is rarely sufficient, especially with discordant couples,” said Goretti Nakabugo from Strengthening HIV/AIDS Counsellor Training in Uganda (SCOT). “Counsellors need to put couples in touch with peer support networks or arrange for follow-up home visits.”
She noted that over and above dealing with the fear, suspicion and anxiety when one partner is found to be HIV-positive, counselling was needed to support both the negative partner – now at high risk of contracting HIV – and the positive partner, who needed to know how to live a healthy life.
Under Ministry of Health guidelines on HIV counselling and testing, only trained counsellors should provide HIV pre- and post-test information or counselling; training for counsellors is at least one-month long and must be conducted by a government-approved institution.
