Tamil Nadu - Madurai   

New dimension in care for HIV/AIDS people

MADURAI: With the objective of opening up another dimension in care and support services for people living with HIV/AIDS, the Family Planning Association of India organised a five-day workshop on ‘Development of positive prevention kit (PPK)’ last week as part of the Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Management Project (CHAMP) supported by International Planned Parenthood Federation, London.

The PPK would be a bagful of information that would provide choices to people living with HIV/AIDS, said Prasanta Bandyopadhyay, Programme Officer, HIV/AIDS Research, South Asia Regional Office, IPPF.

The process of development of PPK would be influenced by development of materials on issues, which were not addressed at all or only inadequately dealt with, he said.

PPK would have various components, which required adjustments to suit local traditions and customs, and therefore it would be pre-tested and fine-tuned. After inclusion of all the comments and adjustments, the kit would be ready by the end of April 2008 with inputs from IPPF and FPAI, said Mr. Bandyopadhyay.

It was a unique embodiment of materials and guidance for people living with HIV/AIDS on what to do and where to approach both for the infected and affected, said Louis S. Paulraj, Branch Manager, FPAI.

The FPAI has been implementing the CHAMP project in seven blocks and providing services for HIV prevention, sexual and reproductive health, sexually transmitted infection management, voluntary counselling and testing, as well as referrals for prevention of parent to child transmission of HIV, anti-retroviral therapy, Cluster Designation-4 count and viral load.

A consultant, Venkateshan Chakrapani, has taken the lead towards development of the kit using participatory methods. He also collected inputs from outreach workers during the workshop period.

Outreach workers from seven blocks, counsellors and staff nurses from Community Care Centre, Reproductive and Family Planning Centre and CHAMP Project participated.

Nisha, Manager, HIV/AIDS Project, FPAI, Mumbai; Armin, Director, Monitoring and Evaluation, Mumbai; and A. Shyamala Devi, Project Co-ordinator, FPAI Madurai, spoke.

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