ANGOLA: Enthusiastic caregivers and silent sufferers
ANGOLA:
Enthusiastic caregivers and silent sufferers
http://www.plusnews.org/AIDSreport.asp?ReportID=6611&SelectRegion=Southern_Africa&SelectCountry=ANGOLA
CABINDA, 13 December (PLUSNEWS) -
Fear of stigmatisation in Angola is keeping people living with
HIV/AIDS in hiding. Caregivers are more than willing to help but
are having a hard time finding patients to take care of.
"People prefer to keep silent and to die in silence," Ambrósio
Cabral, coordinator of Angola's Red Cross HIV/AIDS programme,
told IRIN/PlusNews.
Cabinda, Angola's oil-rich northern enclave, has a population of
350,000 and a 3.2 percent HIV infection rate. Out of the 16
homecare workers trained in the province this year, only five
have work and care for a total of 12 people between them.
In those few cases, caregivers visit without wearing their Red
Cross shirts and caps to avoid raising neighbours’ suspicions.
"The greatest shame is to have an AIDS-related death in the
family, because it is associated with sex and witchcraft," said
Evaristo Lucas Kanica, coordinator of the Red Cross HIV/AIDS
programme in Cabinda.
PSYCHOLOGICAL BURDEN
Of the 10 patients that caregiver José Cuabi N'Zau has seen over
the past year in Cabinda city, only two have disclosed their
status to their families.
One hides his antiretroviral drugs in a suitcase, others take
them secretly, most lie to their friends and family, and all of
them hope that their caregivers will help keep their secret.
Some families demand caregivers reveal their relative's status.
N'zau cares for a woman who keeps the fact that she and her
daughter are HIV-positive from her husband. "It's morally
difficult for me not to inform him," he said.
Secrecy and fear have become a psychological burden for
caregivers: only they are aware of the truth. And because
patients cannot talk to family and friends, caregivers are on
call at any hour of the day or night to find food, to take a
patient to the hospital, to be there when a patient becomes
depressed or just simply for company.
Caregivers receive US $30 per month to look after 10 people -
"it's a great deal of work and a great responsibility," Kanica
said.
Established in 2005, the homecare programme in Cabinda aims to
link into Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT) with work done
by the Central Hospital and the Catholic and Methodist churches
in the hope they will refer HIV-positive people to their
services.
"The church is a [safe place] for the Angolan people, where they
can say what they cannot share with their family," explained
Casal.
KWANZA NORTE
With 16 trained caregivers and no one to care for, the situation
is similar in Ndalatando, the provincial capital of Kwanza
Norte.
No one who is HIV-positive has disclosed their status in this
northern province. According to Salvador João Zimba, provincial
secretary for the Red Cross: "People who are infected in the
provinces hide themselves".
"Our concern is finding those who live with HIV," Zimba said.
Ndalatando’s only VCT center opened two months ago and people
are still fearful to talk about HIV/AIDS.
Some 180km from Ndalatando, in the province of Dondo, things are
the same: caregivers are ready to help but people living with
HIV/AIDS refuse to reveal themselves.
The prevalence rate in Dondo is less than one percent and the
national average for Angola's 14 million population is almost
four percent. UNAIDS estimates that between 100,000 and 600,000
Angolans live with the virus.
NEW DEVELOPMENTS
Home-based care has only just taken-off in Angola, an indication
of the growing response to HIV/AIDS following the end of the
27-year civil war in 2002.
While the epidemic is a relatively recent phenomenon and the
average prevalence rate is relatively low, the number of people
falling ill is growing and beginning to overwhelm hospitals.
In October, in Angola's capital Luanda, IRIN/PlusNews
encountered a patient in the final stages of AIDS who spent 24
hours in a wheelchair on a drip waiting for an empty bed in the
AIDS ward of the Américo Boavista Hospital. She had been
employed as a domestic worker and her employer had bought all
her medicine, including serums, needles, antibiotics, vitamins,
and anti-malarial drugs. She died three weeks later.
"The doctor never spoke with her family about the matter. She
was just another 'animal' in a bed in some hospital," the
woman's former employer, speaking anonymously, said.
In 2007, the Red Cross intends to expand their caregiver
programme to all of Angola's 18 provinces, training 200 workers
to tend to 2,000 HIV-positive people and their 14,000 family
members.
This year, the Angolan Network of AIDS Service Organisations (ANASO)
with the support of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis,
and Malaria trained a total of 85 caregivers from the different
provinces during two seminars. A third will be held in January.
ANASO intends "to create a new dynamic to fight stigma in
communities so that people feel they can reveal their sickness
to their families and accept their condition," the group's
secretary-general, António Coelho, said.
Until that happens, caregivers and patients will have to keep
their secrets.
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