SAHARA J : journal of Social Aspects of HIV/AIDS Research Alliance
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Although the life expectancy of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWH) has increased in the past years, they could experience secondary illness such as peripheral neuropathy (PN). Therefore, they need to adapt to chronic disablement which could affect their quality of life (QoL). The research that informed this article aimed at determining the prevalence of PN among adults living with HIV/AIDS and attending the outpatients' clinic at Rutongo Hospital in the Rulindo district of Rwanda. ⋯ These results indicate a high prevalence of neuropathy among PLWH attending the outpatients' clinic at Rutongo Hospital. In addition, patients with neuropathy had lower QoL scores in the physical and psychological domains than those without neuropathy symptoms. The management of PLWH should therefore include interventions to optimise QoL as well as screening for neuropathy symptoms so that sufferers can liaise with their medical providers to find medical and supportive therapies that could assist them.
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Sex work occurs to meet the demand for sexual services and is a universal phenomenon. In Africa sex work takes many forms and is an important source of income for many women. Yet sex worker reproductive health needs remain largely unmet. ⋯ The decriminalisation of sex work; development of supportive policy; gender equality and economic development are key factors that need to be addressed to increase sex worker resilience. Evidence supports the public health benefit of human rights based approaches to HIV prevention; moralistic and restrictive policy and laws towards sex work are harmful and should be removed. The establishment of these pillars will increase sex worker safety and enhance the inclusiveness of the HIV response.
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The HIV/AIDS pandemic put significant strain on healthcare services in the country. Hospitals were no longer coping with the escalating number of AIDS patients. This resulted in the early discharge of patients, with some patients, too ill to be nursed at home, being sent to hospices for continued care. ⋯ However, they also observed the high quality of care provided by the hospice and understood its benefits for AIDS patients. The study concluded that hospice care relieved families of terminally ill AIDS patients of the burden of care and enabled them to keep on working and earning a living. Recommendations to policy-makers included enhancing hospice care and ensuring the provisioning of culturally safe hospice care.
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Ethical issues regarding HIV/AIDS human research in the developing world remain under continuous evaluation; a critical area of concern includes informed consent. This paper reviews several of the most important ethical and practical aspects of informed consent in HIV research in developing countries. Enhancement of overall understanding of such key issues might promote higher ethical standards of future research. ⋯ International investigators of HIV human research should bear in mind these ethical issues and their potential solutions, when trying to ensure ethical research conduct, based on a truly informed and culturally relevant consent.
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HIV/AIDS has been found to be a challenging disease to humanity, its challenge spin-offs falling especially on to the caregivers of those infected and affected by the virus. This paper aims to discuss the challenges influencing the state of caregiving in the Kanye community home-based care (CHBC) programme in Botswana. ⋯ Caregivers were found challenged by lack of community networks support, inadequate sanitary and care packages, poor shelter compromising privacy, inadequate income and food for their clients, inadequate care motivation as their volunteerism does not attract any payment, inadequate health personnel to offer psychosocial support like counselling, and an unconducive caring environment generally. Putting in place policies to redress caregivers' poverty, helping caregivers start income-generating projects, increasing community assistance and caregiving facilities are recommended as factors to address caregiver challenges.