Shewula Nazarene Clinic hosts HIV testing roadshow-Swazi ObserverAugust09

This Article may be used to:
Make the community aware of HIV/AIDS.

Trainer’s notes:
Everyone should feel part of the struggle in the fight against the pandemic. It would be a good educational article if it tried to accommodate everyone in the community. Although the writer had talked to two people (male and female) but the article focuses much on the males as it is said that a sum of E10 000 has been set aside for a soccer tournament. The article does not make mention of any form of HIV/AIDS awareness competition campaign for females. The writer also highlighted that 40 babies have been diagnosed with HIV and the observation was that these children have contracted HIV in a mother-to-child fashion. Much as this might be correct but the writer should not have used observations on the children contracting the disease but get the statistics from the health institution. Although there is this high observation but the writer did not find out from the crowd how much knowledge they have on the disease both men and women.

Training Exercise:
HIV is a very sensitive issue and everyone should be well informed on preventive strategies and how to live with the virus once it is found in one’s body. How could this article be developed into a strong gender perspective:
– Find opinions from the people on the ground on how to prevent the spread of the disease
– Device gender balanced awareness creation competition campaigns
– Background of the story (such as HIV statistics in the country: male and female)
– Government has introduced the HIV Mother-to-child transmission prevention, find from the health practitioners what makes the number of children infected during birth this high?
– Are the men better informed on the disease
– Other than a soccer tournament, do the people in the community have any income generating projects to keep themselves busy while doing away with poverty
– Do the people have any other forums where they meet most often to freely discuss issues affecting them such as HIV

Other training resources:
– Reports on HIV statistics in the country
– Gender and media handbook
– Reports on what government is doing to combat the scourge