African countries urged to develop home based HIV counseling as followed in Uganda to reduce HIV transmission and early diagnosis.
Christopher Smith, Member of African Subcommittee, House Committee on International Relations has urged the African countries to implement house to house AIDS testing and counseling as done in Uganda. Uganda is conducting this program and as been found very effective in early diagnosis of HIV and also helps in avoiding social stigma of violence against HIV positive person due to ignorance about the disease.
The home based counseling and testing helps in maintaining the privacy and individual care while giving treatment and counseling and this plan in Uganda is funded from the President’s Emergency plan for AIDS relief and consists of reaching about 350,000 homes in Uganda.The program consist of home based counseling about the risk of transmission of virus to others and also helps in understanding the disease as mostly one of the partner would be HIV positive and the risk of abuse by the other partner is high and the workers mostly educate about having safe sex by handing out condoms to ensure that the virus is transmitted from the HIV positive partner to the HIV negative partner. In addition to HIV awareness the workers give mosquito nets and chlorine tablets to help in protecting from mosquito bites to prevent from malaria.
