Palliative care for HIV in the era of antiretroviral therapy availability perspectives of nurses in Lesotho 英文参考文献.docVIP

BMC Palliative Care BioMedCentral Research article Open Access Palliative care for HIV in the era of antiretroviral therapy availability: perspectives of nurses in Lesotho Megan E Kell* and John D Walley Address: Nuffield Centre of International Health and Development, Leeds Institute of Health Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK Email: Megan E Kell* - meg.e.kell@; John D Walley - J.D.Walley@leeds.ac.uk * Corresponding author Published: 15 August 2009 Received: 7 November 2008 Accepted: 15 August 2009 BMC Palliative Care 2009, 8:11 doi:10.1186/1472-684X-8-11 This article is available from: /1472-684X/8/11 ? 2009 Kell and Walley; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: Southern Africa is disproportionately affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In Lesotho 23% of adults are HIV-positive, and only 26% of those in need are accessing antiretroviral treatment (ART). Consequently, about 18,000 people die from AIDS each year. In this situation, palliative care is needed towards the end of life, but is also recommended throughout the HIV disease trajectory. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has produced the Integrated Management of Adolescent and Adult Illness (IMAI) guidelines, which includes a palliative care guidebook (as well as acute and chronic ART guidebooks). IMAI aims to facilitate the implementation of integrated HIV/AIDS care in resource-poor areas. The opinions of health workers towards this integrated approach to care and the use of IMAI has not been considered in previous research studies. This paper therefore aims to address some of these issues. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with