A report on the strategies that have been created to prevent my communicable and non-communicable diseases.

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Lola Makanjuola

Mrs Jackson

Unit9: Understanding Diseases

Group 2

AO4

Introduction

For the purpose of this assignment I will be producing a report on the strategies that have been created to prevent my communicable and non-communicable disease, I will than be discussing the strengths and weaknesses of each strategy and I will be comparing the local strategies to the national strategies.

The National HIV strategy

The national strategy for sexual health and HIV was created by the Department of Health, in England it contains many objectives and targets which they aim to fulfil regarding the disease HIV. Taken from the department of health website the aims are:

“The key aims of HIV prevention are:

To reduce the number of newly acquired HIV infections;

To reduce the levels of unsafe sex (measured, for example, by rates of STIs including rectal gonorrhoea); and

To raise awareness of services.”

The objectives of this strategy is to try to give priority in preventing HIV in gay men or communities, to develop national AIDS Trust with London health authorities to help prevent HIV in African communities. Also to create better outreach services for people with undiagnosed HIV especially the targeting groups, to make sure HIV treatment and several care services help in the prevention of HIV increasing, by providing efficient treatments for STI’s. Another objective is trying to improve services for people who have HIV to deal with issue around safe sex so that they can prevent the disease from spreading “as a first step the Health Development Agency and Terrence Higgins Trust have produced a resource guide for professional on HIV and sexual health promotion for people who have HIV”. Finally to help reduce the use of drug misuse and this is especially targeted at young drug users and to help provide needle exchange schemes for injecting drug use misusers.

The strategy’s aims and objectives are looking at HIV and how it has affected everyone, and I feel that some of their aims are realistic and achievable however this is if the Department of Health is dedicated to fulfilling the aims that they have set out. The advantages of setting targets are they allow the department of health who are working on fulfilling this strategy to know what they are supposed to do, for example one of their aims is to raise awareness of the services available for people who have HIV, by having this aim the department of health will know that they can introduce things such as new services for HIV patients in different communities that people can reach and have quick access to new services. Also having targets means that you will have a specific goal that you want to achieve and will be determined to achieve, however the limitations of having targets are they may be difficult to accomplish them or they may not be achievable in the time scale you have decided to set yourself.

I feel that the strategy does miss some groups it fails to look at those who are already infected by HIV and are suffering from, I feel that all this strategy is about trying to prevent the disease from increasing, it is not looking at the well-being of HIV patients and how it could provide them with better services or treatments. I believe that the promotion ideas are realistic however it determines what group this strategy is aimed at and if society is willing to take part in this strategy being fulfilled by attending or using the services

I think that the strategy can be evaluated through a national survey, such as questionnaires which could be given out at sexual health clinics/GUM clinics and also could be given to people who use the services which this strategy is aiming to create, the good thing about using questionnaires are they are cheap, and easy to give to people and also they have a high response rate because they can be quickly and easily done/answered therefore questionnaires tend to be high in representativness. The advantages of evidence based evaluation are that the department of Health will know through methods of evaluation if the strategy was successful and accomplished their aims and objectives or if they were unsuccessful, it will also help the Department of health by suggesting ways that they can improve services.

As I whole I think this strategy might be successful because the aims I feel are realistic and achievable especially with the money that has already been invested in this strategy and also because the Department of health do not only aim to do this by themselves but they have introduced charities such as the Terrance Higgins trust to help them and because of their already reputation of willingness to help people with HIV it suggests to me that both Department of Health and The Terrance Higgins trust will be able to reach a lot of clients/patients who are more prone to getting infected with HIV or have already contacted HIV, however it might not be successful reasons why I feel it might not be successful is because people may be unaware of the strategy if it’s services or ideas are not promoted properly or effective enough to make people want to use the services, also I feel that this strategy is just aimed at preventing HIV from increasing it is failing to look at people who are already infected by the disease and what they could do to help them. Finally another reason why I feel this strategy might be unsuccessful is because they have not given us a specific target which they want to reach, so I’m not sure this strategy will reach everyone.      

Local strategies

I got my HIV leaflet from Lewisham hospital, this leaflet was not easy to get because firstly I had gone to the local pharmacy and the boots pharmacy in Lewisham and both said that they did not have any HIV leaflets that they could give out. I then decided to go to Lewisham hospital and there I was able to find leaflets which I needed. I personally did not find it embarrassing picking the leaflets the main reason was because I didn’t have HIV so it wasn’t as if I was going to the clinic to get the leaflet because I needed help or I had a motive for using them, also another reason why I was not embarrassed was that the leaflets were made easily accessible they were hanging on the walls in the clinic and people could just take them at random so it wasn’t as if I was asking someone to give them to me. However if I were a person who had HIV I think I would be embarrassed in picking a leaflet because of the stigma and stereotype that has been so highly attached to the disease of HIV and to people who have HIV, I would be embarrassed and would feel that people are watching me as I was taking the leaflets, I think that, that alone would put me off collecting a leaflet or even attending a sexual health clinic to get help or advice.

Join now!

I actually like the leaflet that I was able to find it was the first leaflet I was attracted to, its message is basically about all you need to know on HIV. The leaflet talks about what HIV is, how you can and cannot get it, what you should do if you have HIV, how you can protect yourself from getting it and finally it talks about what to do if you want an HIV test and how you should approach a sexual health clinic and what questions you should ask them. Then they provide you with a help ...

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