by Andy Warren, HIV/AIDS Home-Based Care Program Manager
18 January 2006

In the past month, Ethiopia's HIV/AIDS Home Based Care Program has been partnering with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Ethiopian Ministry of Health (MoH) to launch a training program to prepare counselors for the different AIDS treatment projects starting up all over Ethiopia. Counselors help prepare patients before they start treatment to take their medicines properly and to understand the medicines and how they work. Twelve of our program's beneficiaries went through a three-day program to learn how to be Expert Patients in future trainings. What this means is that they are learning to be actors and actresses who can play different roles and help train counselors and clinical staff. Ten women and two men were trained to act out roles as patients at an AIDS treatment clinic. Every day the counselor trainees would spend part of the day interviewing the Expert Patients and then receive feedback on their performances.

As the workshop continued, the Expert Patients became more confident and gave better and more pointed feedback. Their confidence and sense of value grew and grew. The trainers from the World Health Organization were so impressed with the Expert Patients that they asked if they would be willing to participate in future trainings, perhaps even traveling to other cities in Ethiopia.

This is an amazing transformation for all of these people. Most joined the project when they were, emotionally and physically, at the bottom. Some were confined to bed and most thought they had a short time to live. Now, they all look healthy and clearly expect to live valuable lives.

We had 25 people trained as counselors. Most were from local churches or Christian organizations, and everyone finished the week saying the training gave them lots of new information and tools to use in their projects and churches. We are continuing to develop this network of churches in Addis Ababa involved in AIDS work and partner with them as best we can. We have already made some strides forward with this. Several of our medical teams have done clinics with these church partners and this has opened doors for us to work with these churches. We have also surveyed many of the churches in the city to find out who is already doing AIDS work and what kinds of projects they have. We are working through the Evangelical Churches Fellowship to organize this network.

Finally, our biggest step is our newly formed partnership with Black Lion Hospital in Addis Ababa. WHO is funding a pilot project for our program to join with the hospital staff in providing pre-treatment counseling as well as an adherence program for all patients on anti-retroviral therapy. As we become one of the lead organizations in the country increasing access to life-saving AIDS drugs, we work to be great stewards of the opportunities God has given us for the people of Addis Ababa.