AEGiS-15IAC: Developing culturally-specific HIV risk reduction materials for highland ethnic minority communities in northern Vietnam.

15th International AIDS Conference

Bangkok, Thailand - July 11-16, 2004

Developing culturally-specific HIV risk reduction materials for highland ethnic minority communities in northern Vietnam.

Int Conf AIDS 2004 Jul 11-16; 15:(abstract no. E10004)

Eligh J, Tran VC
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Hanoi, Vietnam

ISSUES: Reducing the harms related to drug use and other risk-related behaviours is slowly becoming a staple in the regional fight against HIV/AIDS. While still a controversial set of measures in some national contexts, harm reduction interventions are increasingly advocated as effective approaches to reduce the harms caused as a result of the development and expansion of overlapping risk environments. Living in some of the most remote, isolated and impoverished areas of the country, few other people are more marginalised in Vietnam than highland ethnic minority populations. Their extensive historical participation in the domestic cultivation of opium poppy, accompanied by the development of their formerly isolated environments, has led them to become increasingly vulnerable to complex and embedded drug use environments of risk and harm emerging as a by-product of rapid national economic development. Unfortunately knowledge of the risks inherent to these changing drug use behaviours, including HIV and other blood-born viruses, is largely non-existent and little drug use and harm prevention and intervention work has been attempted with regard to the specific needs and cultural characteristics of these populations.

DESCRIPTION: With particular reference to and examples from participatory HIV intervention and prevention planning and design activities conducted in six different highland ethnic minority communities in northern Vietnam this paper presents a description and analysis of a culturally-appropriate development process for these largely non-literate populations.

RECOMMENDATIONS: The paper concludes by arguing a more effective approach against the spread of HIV/AIDS and other BBVs in these remote and isolated areas is the identification of ethnically-specific, culturally-relevant and community-centred communication means, and the active participation of local populations in the related design, development and dissemination stages.

Keywords: AEGIS, Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, HIV Seropositivity, HIV Infections, Ethnic Groups, Risk-Taking, Substance-Related Disorders, Cultural Characteristics, Health Planning, Vietnam

040711
E10004