EDITOR - A lot has been said about scaling up HIV and AIDS Programmes in Zimbabwe. Donor funds have been pouring from all corners of the globe. Awareness campaigns are widespread in both electronic and print media and free Anti Retroviral Therapy (ART) can now be accessed at almost all mission and district hospitals. That is quite a remarkable achievement in the fIt is abundantly clear that in dispensing all these interventions, counselling plays a very significant role especially considering that the counsellor is directly involved with the client. They are involved in pre-test counselling, post-test counselling, counselling for psycho-social support, nutrition, family planning options, counselling prior to both cotrimoxazole prophylaxis and ART initiation etc. They are also involved in Prevention of Parent to Child Transmission.
We applaud the gesture taken by the Ministry of Heath and Child Welfare in recruiting Primary Care Counsellors. This new cadre spearheaded and improved the uptake of voluntary Counselling and Testing. It provides initiated Testing and Counselling and an improved adherence rate to Anti-Retroviral Drugs (ARVs) through equipping clients with information about
these drugs and associated side effects and their implications. The advent of HIV and AIDS also saw an increase in bed occupancy at hospitals thereby putting a strain on meagre resources in our medical institutions. The counsellor also intervenes here through providing discharge Planning Services which involve moving chronically and terminally ill clients from Hospital wards to their homes (Home Based Care programme) thereby giving wards much needed breathing space.
My questions are: Who cares for the counsellors? Who represents them at a national level? Is anything being done to improve their working conditions? The counsellors were recruited by the Ministry of health and child welfare through district hospitals. Their salaries are said to be paid by the Ministry’s partners like Global Fund (GF) and Extended Support Programme (ESP) and administered by the AIDS and TB Unit. What’s surprising is that those who are funded by GF seem to be well catered for, yet those being funded by ESP are always left out in the cold. The last time their salaries were reviewed upwards to US$100.00 from US$50.00, was after a document was circulated highlighting their plight.
I want to call on the Minister involved to intervene. We trust that something will be done to stop the mass exodus of counsellors as their role in our society is so important. BRIAN MUNYADZANI, by e-mail
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