Israeli physicians share HIV/AIDS treatment methods with Ethiopian colleagues

Israeli physicians who gained experience treating Ethiopian immigrants living with HIV/AIDS in Israel are sharing techniques for treating HIV/AIDS with Ethiopian physicians, Reuters reports.

About half of HIV-positive people in Israel are of Ethiopian descent, and health care workers treating HIV-positive Ethiopians in Israel "have gained expertise in instructing those from often poor and uneducated backgrounds in adhering to a strict regimen of treatment," according to Reuters (Heller, Reuters, 10/26).

As part of the program -- which is funded by the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and is held at Hadassah Hospital in Israel -- a team of pharmacists, nutritionists, social workers and case managers tracks the "psychological and social impact" of HIV/AIDS on Ethiopians to learn what might prevent or deter them from taking their antiretroviral drugs, the AP/International Herald Tribune reports.

"The type of experience doctors get here cannot be given in Ethiopia," Shlomo Maayan, head of the AIDS center at Hadassah Hospital and coordinator of the clinic, said, adding, "We tell the experience of treating patients for the last five, sometimes 10 years, including all the ramifications and all the complications" (AP/International Herald Tribune, 10/26).

Forty Ethiopian doctors over the past four years have participated in the two-week training sessions, and 10 more are completing the program, Reuters reports (Reuters, 10/26).