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 Counselling and HIV/AIDS
UNAIDS: Technical update
UNAIDS Best Practice Material
HIV counselling is a confidential dialogue between a client and a counselor aimed at enabling the client to cope up with stress and take personal decisions related to HIV/AIDS.
Various studies have proved that counselling has: assisted people to make informed decisions-such as whether to have an HIV test; helped many other people with HIV or AIDS to cope better with their condition and lead more positive lives; and helped prevent HIV transmission.
This best practice material from UNAIDS updates the reader about counselling process and also discusses family level counselling (based on the concept of shared confidentiality). It also briefly describes the idea of 'clinic based counselling' and 'community based counselling'.
The manual contains sections on pre-test and post-test counselling & children and couple counselling.
Various obstacles that stand in the way of HIV counselling being provided effectively have also been enumerated. The inputs required to set up a satisfactory counselling system like proper selection of trainees for counselling, need for training workshops: followed by supervised practice, tips on how to retain trained counsellors and essentials of referral system have also been described.
This best practice material is an essential primer for those working in HIV control projects and programmes. It can be downloaded from:
http://www.unaids.org/publications/documents/health/system/counstue.pdf
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