Public health leaders in the fight against HIV/AIDS have come to an ominous realization: Progress in cutting new infections has slowed. A large reason is a persistent cycle of transmission among young women in sub-Saharan Africa.
Areas that have prevented this transmission share certain things in common.
One is a network of trained community health workers.
World Neighbors is one of the NGOs that works with partners to train these workers in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
Community health workers are unpaid volunteers, primarily women, who live in and with affected communities. World Neighbors’s experience is that community members are much more open and honest with neighbors than with health workers from outside organizations. This is essential to countering the behaviors that result in HIV/AIDS transmission and testing of those who engage in them.
The centerpiece of these programs, carried out with local community groups, is voluntary counseling and testing. World Neighbors and community groups set up counseling clinics in villages. Community health workers educate at-risk neighbors about HIV/AIDS and encourage people to get tested. If positive, community health workers encourage infected persons to receive medication. These workers then help infected persons organize themselves into groups, where they discuss a variety of issues such as healthy and positive living, nutrition and drug management. These groups also act as psychological and moral support groups.
They also serve as the basis for economic development initiatives, including training in sustainable agriculture techniques, credit and savings groups and other activities to increase incomes.
Training and mobilizing community health workers is very effective in reducing infection rates, providing life-saving medication for those who are infected and helping infected persons remain productive community members. It is also an inexpensive approach.