Team PATA

PATA Personalities

QUICK QUOTES FROM PATA PARTICIPANTS:

"It is difficult to separate your private life from your professional life as a counsellor. One should try to separate experiences in your private world from your professional world and we must respect the ethical demands of our professions." - Alexia Kayirangwa, counselor, Rwanda.

"Once your work has an impact outside your workplace, it affects your family life. Sometimes I feel like quitting. We do our best and sometimes a patient still dies. That affects me. We need support structures."?- Lulana Gqamana, nurse. "We should not underestimate the children. There was this one four year-old at my clinic who knew his exact dosage off by heart. And a nine year-old who knew all his medicines by name." - Tebogo Tshengiwe, nurse

"I am inspired by the system of expert patients and want introduce it back home in Cote D'Ivoire. It took me three days to travel to the PATA conference in Swaziland, but it was well worth it." - Francois Akattia, nurse, Cote D'Ivoire.

"You must look after yourself as nurses, because if you don't, and you're not there, then there'll be no-one for the patients to see." - Gertrude Guveya, Zimbabwe

"We must see the word 'expertise' in Expert Patient Programme, for they are people with expertise." - Jenny Altschuler, Family psychotherapist and member of the PATA steering committee

MEET SOME OF OUR PATA PERSONALITIES

Dr Charles Munthali, Nkhata Bay, Malawi

We are just 50 metres from the shore," Dr Charles Munthali told his audience as he described the setup at his clinic in Nkhata Bay, Malawi. Since ARV therapy was initiated at the clinic 33 months ago, 1650 patients have received treatment. The clinic has experienced many challenges, such as staff shortages, a lack of space, limited resources, and the lack of a boat which would enable the staff to reach otherwise inaccessible patients along the lake shore.

Despite these challenges Dr Munthali reported that the clinic has met several goals during 2007. They have opened two static clinics and two mobile clinics, installed a computerized data capturing system, piloted PCR for paediatric diagnosis of HIV and trained more counsellors and health workers.

Meet Nelly Alube-Opiyo, a psychologist from CCC - the Comprehensive Care Centre in Nairobi.

I am the counsellor in charge. Patients who are referred to us first see the nurse, then they are referred to the counsellor and from the counsellor they are referred to the doctor. Often they are referred to us on discharge. We then give them information regarding the clinic and ascertain if they know why they have been referred to us. If they do not know, or do not know their status I counsel them and support them in disclosing their status to family and friends.

Do you have any other roles in the centre?

Yes, when children are referred, we also encourage the caregiver to be tested and to bring in other children for testing. It is normally the mother that brings the child in, so we also encourage her to persuade her partner to get tested.

At what age do you tell the child what you are testing for?

Well, for children who are older than five years, we ask them if they have heard about HIV. If they have, we provide them with more information and tell them that is what we are testing for. If they have not heard of HIV we just tell them we are testing their blood. However, if the child is 10 years or older, and the child is of normal intelligence and not very ill, we tell them that we are testing for HIV and obtain verbal assent. We also counsel the child. We have a support group for children 10 years and older.

PATA spoke to Julius Amoakobekoe, a counsellor from Accra, Ghana at the 2007 PATA Forum in Swaziland.

How did you get involved as a health worker?

I tested positive in 1999. In Ghana, people thought if you just talked to - or touched - someone who is HIV positive that you would also become HIV positive. There were many misconceptions. I used to work at the airport. After I was diagnosed, the doctor wrote my boss a letter to say that they must reduce my workload when the work was especially tough. My boss also told everyone about my status, and I became stigmatised. When eating dinner, people would walk away from the table where I sat down. I was a public enemy, and misunderstood. I decided to leave my job and become involved. I embarked upon giving HIV testimony, talking at churches and so on.

How do you find your work as a counsellor?

In 2000, when I started to work at the hospital, there was no recruitment for HIV positive people. I decided to try and change this. We have many problems in Ghana, one of which is that we have to pay $5 a month for our ARVs. Why? I have travelled to South Africa, Uganda and Botswana and saw that they got medicine for free there, our situation should not be different. I've asked them this and then I was told that they don't have enough manpower, and that the fee helps to pay for the manpower. So I suggested that they employ more HIV positive people in the health services. We can use these people, they can help patients to administer ARVs, for example. About 5 months ago, the National AIDS Control Programme started to do this, to employ HIV positive people. But they're not being paid! This is my next battle, to get the 'volunteers' to be paid, for they must also travel to work and earn money to live from.

What have you learnt at PATA 2007?

I've learnt that we have to gather data properly in Ghana, we don't do it at all. We should also work better as teams - I'm still stigmatized by my colleagues even today, after seven years of working there. We must get more HIV positive people involved in counselling. When new patients come in, they are often so depressed and traumatised that, when someone like me, who is also HIV positive and now their counsellor, tells them this, then they already feel better, they feel they can open up and talk to you. People with HIV can change the situation on the ground.