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About this project
| Last updated: 10.07.04 |
The potential benefits of Antiretrovirals for people living with HIV/AIDS are great.
With ARVs becoming increasingly more accessible in resource-limited settings it is
hoped that people with HIV/AIDS will now face a manageable chronic disease as
opposed to a progressive, debilitating disease resulting in death. As a result, people
will live longer and enjoy a better quality of life.
However, there are significant challenges associated with Antiretroviral therapy.
Rapid emergence of resistant viral strains have, for a long time, been recognised in
the US and Europe. Multi-drug resistant HIV infection rapidly develops through the
sub-optimal use of ARVs, curtailing future treatment options for the patient.
Due to the paucity of doctors in resource-limited settings, ARV administration will, to
a large part, rely on nurses and health care workers.
Enhancing Care Initiative KZN Plus kindly allowed us to visit their six hospital/clinic
sites in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, to carry out a number of informal assessments
with nurses working in the field of HIV/AIDS. These assessments were carried out in
order to recognise nurses’ perceived training needs for successful ARV
administration.
As a result, this training manual has been developed by nurses for nurses to equip
them with the knowledge and skills required to rise up and meet the greatest health
challenge in the world today. We do not profess to have designed a manual that
covers every single aspect associated with ARVs and their delivery. However, we do
hope that this training manual will be seen as a comprehensive nurse teaching pack,
which offers a clear introduction into ARVs and the role of the nurse.
On completion of this training it is hoped that the nurse will feel empowered by
having a basic understanding of ARVs and the challenges they commonly present.
Furthermore, nurses will gain an increased sense of importance and confidence in
the role that they have to play in the professional, holistic care of people living with
HIV/AIDS and the overall success of ARV treatment.
Dr Janet Giddy from McCord Hospital, Durban very kindly allowed us to use some of
her training slides in this manual. Her quip, “With so much work to be done we need
to freely share materials rather than keep reinventing the wheel”, rings very true.
Whilst we appreciate that training materials must vary if they are to meet the needs of
each particular audience, we also believe that a lot of time, money and effort can be
saved by encouraging people to simply adapt existing materials rather than starting
from scratch!
We hope that you will find the Training Manual to be of benefit and wish you good
luck in your training.
Marcus McGilvray, HIV Nurse Specialist
Nicola Willis, Paediatric HIV Nurse Specialist
Registration
We have asked everyone who downloads these materials to register with us, both so that we can build up a picture of who is using the training toolkit, but more importantly, so that we can alert you to new versions of modules, or the addition of new modules to the toolkit.
We also ask users to sign up to receive the electronic newsletter HIV & AIDS Treatments in Practice, and to encourage those they train to do the same. HIV & AIDS Treatments in Practice is intended to support health care workers with up to date information on HIV treatment and care in resource-limited settings, including information on the development and planning of treatment programmes. HIV & AIDS Treatments in Practice is directed by an advisory panel of doctors working in resource-limited settings, and is published twice a month.
Copyright
This training programme is copyright to Africaid, a UK registered charity. Non-profit adaptation is encouraged. Further enquiries should be directed to Marcus@africaid.co.uk