Marie Stopes PNG completes community based mentors workshop

THE Health Department is conducting a nine-day workshop in Eastern Highlands to equip health workers with skills in counselling and testing to deal with HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infection (STI) cases.
A team led by STI/HIV/AIDS programme technical adviser Alice Marai, technical officers Mary Daniel and Isaac Nare are running the workshop in Goroka which is expected to end today.
She said the workshop was split into two components.
The first with six parts for counselling while the other three parts training were based on the laboratory testing.
“Our focus now to provide and give the required upskills training to the participants who are nursing officers, health extension officers and community health workers so that when they go out to their respective areas to provide the counselling and testing, they can be able to deliver the services after this training,” Marai said.
She added that makeshift campaign houses were havens that pose high risk of the public transmission and spread of the HIV/AIDS and STIs during the general election.
She also said this would result in a rise in teenage pregnancies and unexpected pregnancies throughout the country.
“Observing the election period and the risks that comes with it, the Health Department is not directing its focus on the activities of the election, but to train the very people, especially the health workers that are participating in the workshop, so that they can be equipped with the skills of tending to, counselling and testing people that may carry the HIV/AIDS virus and other
STIs.”