AIDS council targets rural areas

By ELLEN TIAMU
THE National AIDS Council is targeting HIV/AIDS awareness and care down to the rural population unlike in the past where it concentrated more on urban areas.
To be able to effectively do that the council has had a staff restructure to include monitoring and evaluation officers for each province.
The 20 recruited officers were last week taken through their roles and responsibilities at a two-day orientation programme that ended last Friday at the Phils Motel in Lae, Morobe.
National prevention deputy director Philip Tapo said the council had realised that development partners and the government had put in much money towards HIV/AIDS awareness and care in the country over the past two to three decades but these had not been properly monitored.
He said another problem was that greater impetus had been placed on urban areas, which accommodated only about 15% of the population while the rest of the population remained largely ignorant on the issue.
The re-structuring means provincial AIDS council offices will have three officers, including a HIV response coordinator and a technical officer.
Tapo said HIV/AIDS was becoming endemic among rural people and the need to provide assistance, properly monitor and provide feedback from these areas was vital as shown in pilot projects carried out in East New Bri­tain, Eastern Highlands and Manus.
This shift by the council is in line with government directions to go rural.
The recent employees were, among other things, taken through national HIV/AIDS strategies and their roles and responsibilities.
Tapo said the officers would be required to collect information from partner organisations and provide rural people with the data to be used to direct or re-direct response based on targeted strategies.
The secretariat has introduced a rural grant scheme where provincial AIDS council committees and CBOs and NGOs can apply for up to K3,000 at any one time to conduct awareness and provide assistance for villagers.
The council said under the previous arrangement much funding was going towards consultants and not much in tangible assistance reaching the people.