Counseling is a confidential dialogue between a client and counselor aimed at enabling the client to cope with stress and make personal decisions related to HIV/AIDS. When Voluntary Counseling and testing centers (VCTC) centers were started initially, their focus was on prevention of HIV infection, HIV testing, and dealing with social and emotional impact of a HIV positive test. The scope of services being provided has over the years expanded rapidly, with addition of prevention of parent-to-child transmission (PPTCT), access to anti retroviral therapy (ART), and better linkages with directly observed treatment short course (DOTS) centers.(1–4) In the third phase of National AIDS Control Program (NACP-111), these VCTC services are being further expanded to Community Health Center (CHC) and Primary Health Center (PHC) levels and clients will be provided comprehensive, quality services under one roof of integrated counseling and testing centers (ICTC). This planned expansion puts pressure on NACP-111 to recruit and train a large number of qualified and skilled counselors who will be the most important functionaries of these VCTC's, PPTCT's, and ICTC's throughout the country.(5) The HIV counselor needs to equip the client to prevent HIV infection, to make an informed choice about HIV testing, to cope with an HIV test result and to understand the implications of lifelong treatment.(6) National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) has developed an intensive 12 days training schedule for developing and fine tuning the counseling skills of these counselors so as to produce counselors who are sensitive to their clients problems, are well informed and can provide high quality VCT, PPTCT, and ART counseling. For this purpose, NACO has identified 18 institutes across the country who will impart trainings to HIV counselors. Our institute was selected to train counselors from Himachal and Haryana state. We tried to study the impact of 12-day intensive training program in enhancing the skills of these counselors.
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Dhadwal et al. (2009) studied this question.