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was still waiting for the department of health to conduct training with the volunteer
caregivers in the organisation:
“… I am a nurse by profession, so I use the knowledge that I have to train the volunteer
caregivers and we also still waiting for the Westville hospital to come in and do the proper
training with them, because they offered us that they would come in and do the infection
control with our care workers.” (HBCC, organisation E)
Some volunteer caregivers were concerned about some family members and elderly
community members who had little knowledge regarding HIV/AIDS with its related
opportunistic infections and infection control practices. Most family members were
overwhelmed and stressed about not knowing how to handle their relatives with HIV/AIDS
causing them not to take precautions:
“Some family members and older people especially grandmothers do not have the knowledge
of what to do if a person is sick, some of them do not even know the symptoms of this
HIV/AIDS disease. Also, when a person is ill, families don’t know that they have to use
gloves. They just use their bare hands to bath them. As they use their bare hands they may get
infected, and then start getting sick…” (Focus group 4, organisation D)
4.6.7 Poor living conditions in the community
Poor living conditions in most communities where repulsive to some volunteer caregivers.
For example, these volunteer caregivers found large families living in small rooms causing
the patient not to have privacy when being cleaned. Such overcrowding allowed easy
transmission of T.B from the patient to family members and volunteer caregivers impacting
infection control practices of the volunteer caregiver negatively because volunteer caregivers
were tempted not to visit such places and as a result patients would not have access the help
that they would need:
“Other challenges that we face are that about six people stay in one house. One may have
T.B and you find that the whole family becomes affected or infected because there is one
room, with no proper ventilation. They do everything here, children sleep and a sick person is
also there. Even if you want to help the patient, there is no space for privacy and when you
want to make the room clean it is not easy. These are the problems we normally face, the
poor families who do not have enough rooms but stay with someone who has T.B., and T.B is
infectious they keep infecting each other without knowing. Sometimes we are tempted not to
go to such homes again”. (Focus group 1, organisation A)
Volunteer caregivers were also sickened about unhygienic conditions in the communities
such as pipes leaking with water causing floods, blocked sewer pipes leakages around houses
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