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Pictures
as a health promotion strategy in addressing HIV/AIDS in developing
countries
Health eCommunication
May
19, 2004
http://www.comminit.com/healthecomm/planning.php?showdetails=188
Description
In
this brief article, physician Edwin Mapara offers highlights of
his 18 years of experience using Teaching AIDS At Low Cost (TALC)
materials in Zambia, Botswana, and London. In the process, he advocates
the use of pictures as a strategy in sexual health promotion, especially
in developing countries (where "...seeing is believing"). He says,
"I strongly feel that many AIDS Educators/Activists in Health Promotion
have not used PICTURES to "tell the story" and have not used PICTURES
to "show" the community who "...want to see AIDS" especially in
the developing world where Prevention activities, AIDS information
and AIDS education have not been very aggressive or have had a luke-warm
approach."
He uses a case
study from his work as Former Chief Medical Officer of Athlone Hospital
in Botswana to illustrate these points. In 1989 4 sets of TALC slides
(24 slides /pictures per set) were developed and then shown to Athlone
health care workers, as well as members of community groups including
schools, churches, industries, village associations, youth groups,
media organisations, the armed forces, and so on. These slides/pictures
featured the virology of HIV/AIDS, clinical manifestations of sexually
transmitted infections (STIs), clinical manifestations of HIV/AIDS,
and prevention and care of those infected.
Mapara explains
that, in the beginning, there was a strong outcry about the use
of these stark, realistic images. (Some elderly or traditional members
of the community, for example, felt "insulted" by the pictures).
However, organisers persisted beyond the initial repugnance; as
Mapara claims, in the year 2000 - after 100 such workshops, this
programme "was documented as "one of the best practises in Botswana
(UNDP/SIDA/ASU, Report 2000)". This honour reflected some of the
good outcomes from the programme, which has resulted in the government's
decision to replicate it in every district. According to Mapara,
increases were seen in the following:
- Knowledge
base (at all levels in the community)
- Voluntary
counselling and testing before marriage and before pregnancy
- Health-seeking
behaviour and self-referral for consultation
- Discussion
of sex, 'good dying', and death
- Referral
of patients from traditional doctors to health facilities
- Formation
of support groups
- Formation
and support of community / home-based care programmes.
Rationale
This article provides a concise but close look at one effort
to use pictures to communicate AIDS information to members of African
communities (and, by extension, might guide those planning programmes
in other developing countries). It is an example of the way in which
the "picturate" community, as the author puts it, can be educated
and changed through visual images rather than words/literature about
HIV/AIDS. As the list of outcomes suggests, pictures can be a strategy
for opening up a community to discussion about difficult or "taboo"
issues. The case study offered here also serves as fodder for thinking
about how a programme might persist beyond immediate community rejection/repugnance,
going on to become quite successful and repeatable.
Source(s)
Letter sent from Dr. Edwin M. Mapara to the Health e Communication
website on May 19 2004; and SAfAIDS News [PDF], September 2003 (Vol.
12, No. 2), pps. 5-7.
Contact
Information
Dr. Edwin M. Mapara
Flat 12 Beaufort Court, The Limes Avenue, New Southgate
London, England N11 1RS
Tel.: 0044 (0)20 8368 8248
aemapara@aol.com
Full
Resource
Click here for the full article in PDF format on the Southern
Africa HIV and AIDS Information Dissemination Service (SAfAIDS)
website.
Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.
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