Unmet Palliative Care Needs of People Living with HIV and AIDS in Hawassa, Ethiopia
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Date
2012-05
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Background: The World Health Organization defines palliative care as an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problems associated with threatening illnesses. Assessing the palliative care needs of people living with HIV and AIDS (PLHIV) and providing them with adequate care and support has a special significance in combating the AIDS epidemic.
Objective: The main objective of this study is to assess unmet palliative care needs of people living with HIV and AIDS in Hawassa town.
Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study design was conducted to assess palliative care needs of PLHIV and qualitative method was applied to triangulate the findings. Adult PLHIV on ART for at least 6 months were randomly selected for quantitative data. The reason for this is that, palliative care team visit and gives support for PLHIV every 3 months. So PLHIV who have been on ART at least for 6 months have more knowledge about palliative care and have a chance to be visited by palliative care team. For qualitative data health care providers and the PLHIV were purposely selected and a total of 6 in-depth individual interviews and four focus group discussions were conducted. Quantitative data was entered in to SPSS for analysis and qualitative data is analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings of the quantitative data supplemented with qualitative results using the process of triangulation.
Result: A total of 390 (121 males and 269 females) PLHIV and 17 (7 males and 10 females)health workers included in this study. The mean age of study participants was 32.9 ± 9.6 years.
As the result of this study the most common unmet palliative care needs are financial assistance (59%), pain relief (48.7%), free treatment for OI (47.9%), nutritional support (38.7%), shelter(28.7%) and home based care (21.3%). Multiple regression analysis showed that all the identified unmet needs for palliative care were more among unemployed PLHIV than employed (p<0.05).
The health care providers indicated that shortage of staff, lack of funding, lack of equipment and lack of strong policy on palliative care program were the main barrier to meet the need of palliative care among PLHIV.
Conclusion and recommendation: In conclusion the identified palliative needs in this study include financial assistance, nutritional support, treatment for opportunistic infections, shelter.
Home based care and pain relief. These findings could be used as base for the development of a comprehensive palliative care policy and programmes for PLHIV in Hawassa. So the government and other donor agencies should give emphasis to access and availability of palliative care services.
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Keywords
Palliative Care Need, PLHIV