By PAUL MAOLAI
TEARS flow freely as a person living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) John Waidala told his story at the closing of a workshop at Awaiama recently.
Mr Waidala’s moving story of how he lived with the virus ended a two-week voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) workshop in Alotau from Aug 13-24 at the Awaiama Anglican parish, about 50km from Alotau.
The workshop was an initiative of the Maramatana Counselling Services, which had organised home-based care training and basic HIV/AIDS training to help participants do their work in the Maramatana local level government.
According to one of the workshop facilitators Milne Bay provincial AIDS care and counseller Doreen Nadile, problems highlighted during the workshop were adultery, drinking, drug abuse and other social related problems.
Mrs Nadile said this workshop had helped the participants to properly apply counselling skills to help people who experience these problems in the community.
Participants came from various wards in the Maramatana LLG including Keia, Garuahi, Huhuna, Iapoa and Awaiama.
Participants said that workshop was a real boost for the people in the rural areas.
“Workshops should be focused in the rural communities because the HIV/AIDS trend is now moving into the rural communities,” Mrs Nadile said.
“We should inform the National AIDS Council and all provincial AIDS committees to go out to the communities in the most rural areas to deliver training and in doing so, we hope that people are informed to take precautions and know about the disease and this should help minimise the spread of the disease,” she said.
Meanwhile, Maramatana LLG area manager Lindsay Elesana told the participants to show compassion for PLWHAs and counsel people the way Jesus did in the Bible with a lot of compassion.
The participants had a candle light vigil and read the counsellors pledge and spent a minute in silence for all people who have died of AIDS before signing the counsellors code of ethics.
The vigil was a sad one where participants shed tears in memory of those that had died from the virus.