Documents

Counselling and HIV/AIDS

18 March 1998

HIV counselling has been proved effective in various ways. An evaluation of The AIDS Service Organisation (TASO) in Uganda has shown that it helps people accept and cope with the knowledge of being HIV-positive, and furthermore encourages acceptance from families and communities. A Rwandan study has proved that HIV counselling can help people make decisions about HIV testing, as well as reduce HIV transmission. Yet there is a reluctance among some policy-makers and service managers to give counselling its proper due as a discipline in which trained practitioners can produce measurable, useful results. For this reason it is under-resourced and not fully appreciated.