(Rock Sound, Eleuthera) – Healthcare professionals from the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) HIV/AIDS Centre in New Providence were in Eleuthera from Tuesday, July 31st, 2012 until Saturday, August 4th, 2012 to offer training in ‘Provider initiated HIV Testing & Counseling’ (PITC) and to introduce the 15 minute ‘Rapid Testing’ method for HIV/AIDS to the island.
A three day ‘Train the Trainers’ seminar and workshop was hosted at the Fountain of Life Kingdom Ministries Church, which began on Tuesday, July 31st and wrapped up on Thursday, August 2nd. An invitation was extended to all uniformed and non-uniformed officers as well as community minded persons to take part.
The workshop was followed by free Rapid HIV Testing offered at the Tarpum Bay Homecoming Site from 12 noon until 9pm, on both Friday, August 3rd and Saturday August 4th – during the ‘Back to the Bay’ festivities.
Day one of the seminar focused on HIV/AIDS 101 training – re-familiarizing the local health care workers and members of the community in attendance with the fundamentals of HIV/AIDS. Other topics presented and discussed, included; confidentiality, universal access, partner notification and contact tracing, stigma and discrimination, condom social marketing and more.
Day two, saw the MOH presenters; Marva Jervis, Acting Manager of the HIV/AIDS Centre, and Larrie Williams, Coordinator of the Comprehensive STI Clinic, going into greater depth with local health care workers with the details of PITC, covering topics like; counselling principals and skills, protocol, informed consent information, and preparing the provider to perform PITC – with role play sessions and post-test training assessment and evaluation. Later in the afternoon, local healthcare providers were trained in administering the ‘Rapid Testing’ method.
Organizers said that one of the main goals of the week’s activities, was to increase the number of PITC providers in local facilities offering HIV testing, and also commented that PITC was one part of a major strategy to make HIV testing and counselling more available and accessible throughout the country.
Training seminar in progress on Wednesday, August 1st, with local healthcare providers.
Some of the key objectives of the training seminar were: to teach the benefits of HIV testing with patients/clients; to provide information on HIV transmission, prevention and access to care and treatment; to discuss and identify the need for confidentiality, and informed consent – employed in practical settings; to discuss the benefits of disclosure and partner notification; to teach how to confidently and effectively deliver HIV test results; and to understand and explain Rapid HIV and subsequent testing when there is a positive result.
Jervis, one of the main presenters at the training workshop and a coordinator of the Rapid Testing offered at the Tarpum Bay homecoming during the holiday weekend said that the testing event at the Tarpum Bay homecoming was the fifth one of its kind done in the country so far, with crowd venue testing events also held in Andros at the Crab Fest, in Abaco during the Powerboat event, as well as in Rawson Square.
Jervis shared that they hoped to, “Change the face of HIV, and to offer the hope of management of the situation”, much like the ever more common non-communicable diseases (NCD’s) – downgrading HIV to a manageable disease, rather than an immediate death sentence – and to make testing a part of normal routine health care, removing the stigma and discrimination.
The five day, training and testing events were sponsored by PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), with a grant – said by a PEPFAR administrator, to be used to, “maximize the prevention efforts and reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS in developing countries and enable countries to strengthen their services for sustainability.”
