There is an article on Health Canal (an online Health newswire / Medical Research News wire service provider) that talks about a pilot intervention program to assist women with HIV/AIDS.
Multidisciplinary teams of researchers from UCLA and India initiated a new intervention program, in which ‘lay women’ in the rural areas of Andhra Pradesh were trained as social health activists to assist women who have HIV/AIDS. This significantly improved patients’ adherence to antiretroviral therapy and boosted their immune-cell counts and nutrition levels.
The ‘lay women’ were trained by the research team to serve as accredited social health activists, or ASHAs, and their work was overseen by rural nurses and physicians. These ASHAs then provided counseling and support to the women with HIV/AIDS, as well as assistance aimed at removing the barriers they face in accessing health care and treatment.
According to this article, currently in India there are 2.47 million people affected with HIV/AIDS with Andhra Pradesh as its epicenter.
You can read the article here, the article is interesting to read, but you have to excuse a few spelling errors.
The National Institute of Mental Health funded this study. Findings from the study are currently available online in the Western Journal of Nursing Research (subscription required).