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Cutting Through the Stigma |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: Training community members such as barbers as peer educators can be an effective way of spreading information on HIV/AIDS throughout low-literacy, rural communities, say findings published this week in the open access journal Human Resources for Health. Lead researcher, Koen Van Rompay, and colleagues from Sahaya International, the University of California and READ (India) recognised that rural communities are often neglected when it comes to HIV awareness programs. Basic health-care infrastructure tends to be minimal, and there is often low awareness and high stigma regarding HIV (and sexual issues in general), fuelled by low literacy, seasonal migration, gender inequality, spatial dispersion and cultural taboos. In a year-long pilot project, sponsored by the Elton John AIDS Foundation, six non-governmental organisations (NGO) collaborated to build and test an HIV peer education model for communities in the rural district of Perambalur in Southern India. As part of the program, 20 NGO outreach workers, 52 barbers and 102 women's self-help group leaders were trained to be peer educators. Cartoon-based materials including flipcharts, booklets and stickers were developed to teach people about their susceptibility to HIV/AIDS and to suggest practical ways to reduce the risk of infection. Women trained as peer educators enjoyed a sense of pride and increased social recognition, which the researchers hope could help sustain the peer dialogue on HIV/AIDS. Article citation and URL available on request at press@biomedcentral.com on the day of publication. 3. BioMed Central (http://www.biomedcentral.com/) is an independent online publishing house committed to providing immediate access without charge to the peer-reviewed biological and medical research it publishes.
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