About AHS

What we do ?

HIV/AIDS
There is great concern at the increasing incidence and geographical spread of HIV infection. Extrapolation of current trends present a horrific picture of a decimation of the economically active section of the population, which will have a disastrous effect on the efforts of the country to develop.

National AIDS Council statistics show that the rate at which HIV infection is spreading is now an average of 30% per year. 20-39 years is the most infected age group for males, and 5 years younger for females. These age groups should be viewed with some caution as the age and sex of 40% of cases is unknown.

There were 8202 people known to be infected as at 30th September 2003, of which 1765 had an AIDS defining illness and 313 deaths have been recorded. This is almost certainly a gross underestimate because of:-

  1. Lack of testing facilities in rural areas.
  2. No national notification system.
  3. Inadequate sentinel testing.
  4. People not coming forward for testing for fear of discrimination.
  5. Prevalence of pre-marital and extra marital sexual relationships.
At this time the Screening Test is generally available only at provincial hospitals and the Confirmatory Test at Port Moresby Hospital. It is anticipated that the Rapid Results Test will be more widely available later this year.

The need to reduce the spread of HIV infection is regarded as so important that it is emphasised throughout the training of our student nurses and student community health workers. This includes teaching the skills to run awareness campaigns and community education.

All of our Village Health Aides and Village Birth Attendants are educated about HIV/AIDS. Our Village Health Promoters are educated about HIV/AIDS and equipped with materials to carry out awareness and health promotion in their communities.

HIV/AIDS is included in all Inservice training, upskilling programmes and refresher courses. We regularly receive updates from International, National and Local agencies dealing with HIV/AIDS, which are reproduced to keep all of our staff informed.

We are planning to relaunch the HIV/AIDS Distance Learning Course, produced by Sr Lesley Ririka. This will be distributed to all of our health facilities for our health workers to pursue.

We are planning to initially train 1 health worker in each diocese in counselling skills to enable them to provide support to patients being tested for HIV infection or being treated with Antiretroviral drugs. We are seeking a suitable course with the National AIDS Council. This programme will need to be extended as the number of people infected with HIV increases.

HIV Infection is now increasing by approximately 30% per year.

The actual prevalence in rural areas is unknown.

HIV/AIDS is included in all training conducted by AHS.


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This web-site was last updated on the 20th of Nov. 2004