Therapeutic patient education and disclosure of status of HIV infected children in Yaounde, Cameroon Achievements and competence

INTRODUCTION: Psychosocial support and therapeutic patient education are recommended practices that are poorly reported. Our objective was to describe the main achievements after a patient therapeutic education program conducted for pre-adolescents and adolescents with HIV infection. METHOD: This qualitative study of 37 children with a mean age of 11 years assessed the outcome of an educational program of 8 sessions that ended by the disclosure of their HIV status. Semistructured interviews that took place 8 weeks after the last session and lasted 20 minutes evaluated the following areas: knowledge of the disease, its treatment, its prevention, and their skills in managing their treatment and the secret. RESULTS: The level of knowledge was acceptable except about HIV transmission, and specifically, how they had acquired the disease. In all, 33/37 (89%) of the children were able to cite or write the name of their disease; 29/37 (78%) had acquired knowledge of their treatment (name of the drugs, objective, and daily treatment times); they were able to manage treatment intake away from home; and secrecy was the standard for all. However, many were unable to explain how they had acquired the virus. CONCLUSION: Therapeutic patient education for HIV status disclosure enables adolescents to acquire knowledge about their disease and the ability to manage it. The poor results observed for knowledge of transmission needs to be improved after disclosure in support groups.