MA , Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, 2011 / South Africa has a high number of people living with HIV as UNAIDS (2009) projected the
population of people living with HIV to be 5.7 million of which 20% of this population is
said to be in employment. As a corrective measure, various strategies at national and
company levels are being employed to get people to test for HIV. HIV testing helps people to
know their status which is a gateway to informed prevention behavior and treatment. In
workplaces, peer educators play an important role in getting workers to take up HIV test. As
workplace peer educators mobilize workers to take up HIV test, they continue to face
challenges. This precedes the broad objective of this study, which is to understand challenges
faced by workplace peer educators in getting workers to take up HIV test.
This report is a product of in-depth interviews, with fourteen peer educators, two wellness
officers and the wellness coordinator. Participant observations and document analysis were
also employed in gathering data. The data collection process extended from July to December
2010 in a mining company in the North West province in South Africa. Findings of the
research revealled that despite the company’s HIV testing programme being a success as
evidenced by a recorded cumulative annual uptake rate of 82% (2009), peer educators still
face challenges emanating from environmental, programmatic and socio-interactional and
perceptional factors. Environmental factors include skepticism based on precarious
employment contracts while programmatic factors include certification of test results,
speculation of test results based on time spent in the testing cubicle, consent procedures and
incentivisation of testing. Lastly socio-interactional and perceptional factors that include
stigma and discrimination, cultural beliefs, poor disclosure strategies, perceived racialisation
of workplace testing centers and male workers relying on results from partner’s antenatal test
were identified as another set of challenges faced by peer educators.
The study suggests that in order to improve the HIV test uptake rate, in this context referring
to the attainment of an absolute uptake rate, mitigation measure which include the use of
trade unions in mobilizing workers for HIV testing, training on disclosure, re-negotiation and
design of testing programmes and education must be considered. The adoption and
administration of these measures into the case study company’s HIV test programme and
other institutions facing the same challenges will help improve the HIV test uptake.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/10353 |
| Date | 04 August 2011 |
| Creators | Sibanda, Ochard |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf, application/pdf |
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