Twenty-four family planning nurses and midwives have recommended that HIV test results in future be passed on to the clients through the same medics who counselled them instead of through medical officers newly appointed to break the news.

The 24 said this at Victoria Hospital just before they received certificates on Friday January 24, after following a four-day course which they said greatly helped them advance their counselling techniques.

"This is particularly of significance on Praslin where the results are passed on to doctors to convey the results to clients who would have initially been counselled by somebody else," Mrs Bella Henderson, the director for programme development in the Ministry of Health explained to Seychelles Nation.

The nurses had said it was particularly important that counsellors broke the news of the HIV tests, especially because many doctors happened to be expatriates, and though qualified in their own fields, may be lacking in some of those intricate communication skills that would best permeate through to a Seychellois client.

If another one of the nurses' recommendations goes through, medics wearing "full protective gear, including goggles," may be the ones to attend to mothers during their delivery, as a measure the nurses proposed to help ward off HIV that some of the expectant mothers could be harbouring.

Another one of their recommendations was that testing for pregnant women be made mandatory, a proposal that drew the support of the Alliance of Solidarity for the Family (ASFF) among other organisations.

"ASFF pledges its full support for this recommendation," Mrs Rose-Mary Elizabeth, who head the non-governmental organisation, said immediately afterwards.

"It is better that we women go for voluntary testing because we are the most 'convenient' carrier of HIV/AIDS for our children.

"Therefore should we fail to comply with such good cause, it is important and fair that the law makes provision to protect the new born babies from the pandemic," she said, adding:

"As we become pregnant, it is good to remember all along that it is important to have a healthy child. We should be prepared to accept what is necessary to prevent the baby from any harmful effect," the executive director said.

The participants also felt other medics should be trained to counsel the 24 participants themselves, after they spent time counselling people before and after the clients underwent the tests.

"We will require carers for us carers," they said.

Mrs Henderson said that the workshop was the first of three programmed to help the health workers improve on the number of pregnant women who presented themselves for the HIV test, and therefore subsequent free treatment of those found positive, in a bid to prevent unborn babies from being infected with AIDS.

"Out of 1568 women who received ante-natal services (ANC) in 1999, only 661 took the HIV test, representing 42% of the ANC attendees," the ministry said in a statement which added that in 2001, 67% were tested, and last year, 83% were screened for HIV.

"We now hope to reach the nearly 20% who are not being tested," medics said on Friday January 24.

Noting that there were two more courses in the offing, Mrs Georgianna Marie, of the AIDS prevention and control programme urged the participants to make any recommendations that could help improve on the future workshops.

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