Psychosocial care of people living with HIV in Benin

The psychosocial care of persons living with HIV/AIDS is a crucial factor for their health improvement. The needs of people living with HIV (PLHIV) are not limited to access to medicine and medical care. They require other dimensions of care such as psychological, social and spiritual support. This support can help reduce the perceived inevitable causal relationship between HIV infection and death. It can also diminish social exclusion and promote better social integration. The objective of this work is to study the psychosocial care of PLHIV provided by social services of the city of Porto-Novo to users (PLHIV), their parents, resource persons and social and health workers. A range of techniques was used for data collection, including observation, interviews, document analysis and a questionnaire survey. The results showed the existence of a fairly good organizational structure, a relatively good performance of staff in terms of care provision and a good level of user satisfaction; nevertheless, patient mistrust of staff due to a lack of privacy and intimacy was also noted. Despite considerable efforts in this direction, it is essential to establish a specific policy for psychosocial care based on interventions of specialists from different sectors.