International assistance cut as Cambodia works to prevent HIV-AIDS disease

HIV/AIDS risk awareness training for sex-workers in Cambodia April 2008. Image: Masaru Goto/World Bank

(WNN/VOA) CAMBODIA: Cambodian health officials will travel to Washington in July to share their experiences and ideas at the 19th International AIDS Conference. Health officials now say they are worried a decrease in aid funding to fight the disease could hurt their efforts to stop it.

“After checking the annual rate of HIV patients, we could see a big decrease in the HIV rate,” Mean Chivun, director of the Center Against HIV, Skin Disease, and Venereal Disease at the Ministry of Health, told VOA Khmer. “In 1998 there were 100 new HIV patients a day. From 2010 to 2012, that daily rate is approximately 2.”

It took more than decade for HIV/AIDS to reach Cambodia after the lethal viral illness saw its first documented case in the United States in1981.

But in the 21 years since, Cambodia has made strides in reducing the prevalence of the disease—far below 1 percent.

Cambodia aims to raise AIDS/HIV awareness among drivers

06 November 2009
By Wang Eng Eng
Channel NewsAsia

PHNOM PENH: Cambodia's battle against AIDS and HIV infection has hit the road.

From this year, new drivers will have to learn more than just how to handle a vehicle; they will also be quizzed on their knowledge of AIDS/HIV infection.

"Every year, we have more than 20,000 people who want to get a driver's licence. So during the examination, we'll put 12 questions on HIV prevention," said Lim Sidenine, director of Planning and Admin General Department, Ministry of Public Works & Transport, Cambodia.

Questions include how AIDS/HIV infection is transmitted and how to protect oneself against the disease.

The Ministry of Public Works & Transport is also taking the lead in educating truck and lorry drivers, as this group is considered at greater risk of AIDS/HIV infection.

Truck and lorry drivers play a key role in Cambodia's infrastructure growth as they transport building materials across the country.

However, most of the infrastructure and road improvement projects are concentrated in towns with a high prevalence of AIDS/HIV infection such as Poipet, which is at the Thai-Cambodia border.

Cambodia's HIV infection rate has fallen in recent years from 0.9 per cent in 2006 to 0.7 per cent in 2008 - mostly due to government efforts to promote condom use in brothels.

HEALTH-ASIA: Religious Leaders Tackle HIV, AIDS

By Jaime Lim

BANGKOK, Jan 19 (IPS) - The Korean superstar RAIN was roped in by the Christian relief group World Vision last year to help promote awareness of HIV and AIDS, especially among the youth. Over in Fiji, people living with HIV can get internship opportunities at the World Council of Churches (WCC) in the Pacific.

These are just two examples of how faith-based groups are increasingly addressing social issues like HIV and AIDS, which were often thought of -- and are still viewed by some -- as a curse that befalls ‘bad’ people.

This engagement in social issues was the theme that ran through a conference held here this week, called ‘Inter-Faith Consultation on Children and HIV’, organised by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) East Asia and Pacific, and attended by more than 80 religious leaders and participants.

Despite fundamental differences, Buddhist monks, Christian ministers and Muslim clerics agreed that their involvement in efforts to fight the pandemic is a key part of their ties with their communities. After all, religion shapes culture and values for many in this region.

In the case of the WCC’s internship programme in Suva, council executive secretary Fe’iloakitau Kaho Tevi said: "This sends out a strong message that positive people can be good workers and that you don’t have to be afraid of working with them."

HIV and AIDS are not just health crises, but have social and moral elements as well. "This is where religious leaders can be powerful agents of change with their enormous influence in reducing stigma and discrimination," reckoned Simone Charnley, regional coordinator of the Bangkok-based Asian Muslim Action Network (AMAN).

According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS), some 4.9 million people were living with HIV in Asia in 2007. Of these, 440,000 became infected that year. Some 300,000 people also died from AIDS-related illnesses in 2007.

In the Asia-Pacific, four countries have a generalised HIV epidemic -- Thailand, Cambodia, Burma and Papua New Guinea.

In Cambodia, where the adult HIV prevalence rate now stands at 1.6 percent, Buddhist monks are quite involved in supporting those living with HIV and AIDS. Apart from two hotline numbers run by Buddhist monks to answer queries on the pandemic, there is also access to healthcare, the provision of income generating activities and food, shelter and school materials to children, as well as meditation and counselling services.

According to the Buddhist Leadership Initiative, almost 30 percent of monks in China, Cambodia and Laos have received training on HIV and AIDS. These programmes help them in promoting greater involvement in society of those living with the pandemic, giving them a sense of normalcy and addressing stigma and discrimination in society.

At the same time, Captain John Kerari of the Salvation Army Papua New Guinea Church Partnership Programme stressed that HIV and AIDS programmes by faith-based programmes are by themselves inadequate -- that governments need to be proactive and lead in managing the pandemic. Papua New Guinea registers the highest adult HIV prevalence of 1.8 percent in Asia and the Pacific, according to UNAIDS.

For his part, Lawrence Maund of The Sangha Metta Project, which engages Buddhist monks in HIV and AIDS prevention and care, says that particular focus must be given to young people and educating them about behaviour needed to prevent HIV and AIDS. In line with this, he questioned the absence of youth leaders at the UNICEF conference, which was supposed to focus on children.

He encouraged others to explore the potential of youth leaders in reaching out to their peers. "Young people will talk to you, but they might not open up to you. They were not born during the HIV/AIDS crisis (mid-eighties), but were born into a time of complacency," he remarked.

Datuk A Vaithilingam, president of the Malaysia Hindu Sangam, vice president of the Malaysian AIDS Council and former president of the Malaysian Consultative Council on Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and Sikhism, says he sees a lack of programmes for Hindus living with HIV and AIDS outside of India, and called for greater involvement of Hindu-based groups in addressing the pandemic.

Tevi, a WCC member from Fiji, voiced his concern about the effectiveness of responses by different religious groups to HIV and AIDS. "My fear is that we have become a ‘band aid organisation’. We recognise the effects of HIV/AIDS, but do not address the root cause of the problem," he said.

Maund says that giving HIV and AIDS a public face does make a difference. During the Loy Krathong festival in the northern Thai province of Chiang Mai in November 2007, he says, the beauty queen on the float that weaved through the city streets was HIV-positive and used the occasion to assert her rights. She was part of the Chiang Mai Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS.

Maund recalls that seeing this, "this man (from the crowd) approached one of the paraders and asked if they were really HIV/AIDS positive. He said, ‘I have HIV too, can I join you?’ That was the first time this man came out of his shell."

The Korean superstar RAIN was roped in by the Christian relief group World Vision last year to help promote awareness of HIV and AIDS, especially among the youth. Over in Fiji, people living with HIV can get internship opportunities at the World Council of Churches (WCC) in the Pacific.

Project HANDLE offers safe place for Cambodians to talk about AIDS

Vanessa Keo, 16, gets some help from music instructor Sophan Nol during a class on traditional Cambodian music at Neighborhood House at Rainier Vista. (Joshua Trujillo / P-I)

October 14, 2007
By CHERIE BLACK
P-I REPORTER
Seattle Post Intelligencer (Seattle, Washington, USA)

On a windy Saturday afternoon, three Cambodian women sit in a corner and sew. They attach buttons on a coat, or work on costumes for their children's dance performance.

Around the corner, teenagers are learning to play Cambodian music on traditional instruments. Beside them, younger children are learning traditional dances in time with the melody. Upstairs, about a dozen Cambodian-American children are learning how to speak their parents' native language.

They meet every week at the Neighborhood House at Rainier Vista to share similar backgrounds and heritage. But discreetly integrated into the social events is a program to raise awareness of HIV and AIDS -- a disease that ravages Cambodia and is a high risk to Cambodians living in Seattle.

Cambodia has the fastest-growing HIV/AIDS rate in Asia, and Washington state has the third-largest Cambodian refugee population in the United States, with most living in Seattle/King County, Warya Pothan said.

Pothan is a Cambodian immigrant who was hired by the non-profit Neighborhood House to direct Project HANDLE.

A 2003 assessment by the University of Washington of Cambodian-American youths involved in area groups found that 93 percent did not talk to their parents about HIV, sexually transmitted diseases, sex or reproductive health problems. About 83 percent became sexually active at the age of 16 years or younger, compared with 33 percent of American youths overall.

"AIDS is highly stigmatized in the Cambodian community, so we must integrate HIV education into existing activities to get people to listen," Pothan said.

So far, Project HANDLE, which stands for HIV/AIDS Network Development and Life-skills Experience, has collected more than $1.5 million in multiyear federal grants. It has used the money to run a mix of peer education, tutoring, prevention classes for parents and youths, dance and music classes, parent training and job skills preparation.

Its aim is to help Cambodian refugees and young Cambodian-Americans avoid behaviors that can lead to AIDS and substance abuse.

More than 150 young people have been trained during the past three years so they can visit with youth groups to talk about the disease.

Cambodian parents say the program provides a place not only for children and adults to gather, but also to address an issue most would never talk about on their own.

Mollina Nguyen, 8, bottom, Sovannarith Khem, 9, Selena Keo, 10, Savanny Yen, 11, and Darleen Sean, 11, practice writing Cambodian characters at Neighborhood House. With help from federal grants, the non-profit provides a variety of educational programs. (Joshua Trujillo / P-I)

"In our culture and community, we have food and come together and talk and share things with each other, but it was embarrassing at first to talk about AIDS," said Sokha Keo, who comes to sew costumes for her daughter's recitals. "We hide things like this in Cambodia. It's better to talk about it, like we do in the U.S."

Alex Keo, 16, has been coming to music and dance classes at Neighborhood House for two years, and became a peer educator for HIV/AIDS. He talks to Cambodian youths around Seattle about the disease.

"We don't just talk about HIV, we also talk about how it relates to life through stereotypes, drinking and risky behaviors that can lead to HIV," he said. "We're not just teachers to them, we're their age and can relate to them."

Because of its success in meshing HIV and AIDS education into existing programs, the group has received a $2.5 million, five-year federal grant to expand the program to African-Americans and to immigrants from East Africa and Vietnam. The expanded program will focus on youths 12 to 17 and on women. It also will provide HIV testing, counseling and referrals for substance-abuse treatment and mental health services.

Pothan said she hopes that expanding the program will help more people gain access to information they otherwise would be limited in receiving.

"There really isn't a lot of HIV testing and counseling for these populations," she said. "We want them to have stability and connect with their culture and learn life-saving information at the same time."

P-I reporter Cherie Black can be reached at 206-448-8180 or
cherieblack@seattlepi.com.