AIDS victims look to brighter future

PEOPLE living with HIV (PLHIV) are taking the lead to become part of the solution to the AIDS epidemic.
National AIDS Council Secretariat (NACS) director Wep Kanawi said, for too long, people had looked at PLHIVs as the problem but that would have to change.
He was speaking at the first day of the national PLHIV summit in Port Moresby yesterday.
Kanawi said it was good to see PLHIVs coming together, discussing the problems they faced and coming up with solutions that would help them.
Kanawi spent time with the participants during different sessions listening to their discussions of various topics under treatment, prevention, care and support.
The summit was intended to provide opportunities for PLHIV to educate and be educated through the coming together and sharing, skills building that would help them in the development of their local network.
Topics discussed included treatment procurement process by Dr Agatha Lloyd from the Health Department, research prevention by Dr Holly Aruwafu of the National Research Institute and the national HIV strategy by Sil Bolkin of NACS.
A Western Highlands participants raised a concern about research on HIV/AIDS being done only in urban areas.
He said research must also be done in remote areas where there were no government services because people in those areas lacked knowledge about the virus where as in the urban areas, they were fully aware of it.
He gave an example of people in the rural areas refusing to use condoms as one of the methods of preventing the transmission of HIV.
He pointed out that many other PLHIV were hiding because they were too ashamed to come out and reveal their status.
A woman participant from East New Britain responded with an account of how successful advocacy was in her province.
She said they had about 40 voluntary counselling and testing sites and because of their continuous awareness campaigns, a lot of people from the villages were going forward to be tested.
She said it was up to them (PLHIV) as advocates to bring the awareness out to the people to help them understand HIV.