Integrated Regional Information Networks - December 31, 2004

DURBAN (PLUSNEWS) - AIDS activists in South Africa have called for the revision of "outdated" HIV/AIDS messages which have been circulating for years but have failed to achieve behaviour change.

Handing out pamphlets with catchy slogans has little effect, experts say. People require more than awareness and basic education - they need advice on how to apply their knowledge of AIDS to their daily lives.

Yet, large numbers of grassroots organisations keep handing out pamphlets with simplified phrases like "Use condoms" or "Break the silence", which were developed more than 10 years ago. As a result, experts have found that many South Africans have lost interest in understanding the virus, while the HIV infection rate has remained stubbornly high at more than 21 percent of the population.

Sally Ward, a manager at Soul City, an HIV/AIDS learning material producer, told PlusNews that people were tired of hearing the "same old" AIDS messages over and over again. "The pandemic has changed [over the years], and so has people's need for information," she said. People do not want to hear anymore that they need to use condoms, but rather how to negotiate safer sex with their partners.

Nonhlanhla Xaba, operations manager of the Durban-based AIDS Foundation South Africa, gave a further example of a widely used awareness campaign that she said failed to make the grade. "The slogan ABC [Abstain, Be faithful, use a Condom] is regrettably still prevalent, although we know that women, due to gender imbalances, cannot implement these rules," she noted.

Xaba also highlighted the fact that AIDS messages needed to be updated regularly. "Right now, messages crafted years ago tend to stay on although they clearly have loopholes."

For maximum impact, HIV/AIDS messages need to be well researched and tested by a target audience before being publicised. The Soul City education team, for example, goes through an in-depth evaluation process before launching new training material.

Most recently, Soul City has been developing brochures on the subject of antiretroviral therapy. The team first interviewed a range of health workers, doctors, nurses and patients for background information, then discussed the brochure content in a workshop, wrote a number of drafts and, lastly, tested the new education material with a target audience. The process took almost a year, Ward said.

"It is very difficult to develop material on complex, medical topics that is easy to understand," she pointed out.

Soul City was founded in 1994 when little user-friendly educational material was on the market. It has developed a range of training materials, including posters, comic books and videos, as well as working on "edutainment" television and radio programmes.

"We don't have a reading culture in South Africa," noted Xaba. "Especially young people need to be entertained while educated, for example through drama, games and activity-based learning."

She added that a large number of education programmes have failed to make an impact because they were designed by people who had a great deal of medical knowledge, but knew little about the cultural realities which would determine whether people would be able to relate to the messages.

Training organisations agree that there is a huge gap between hearing a slogan and behaviour change.

Laura Washington, facilitator of the Durban-based training organisation Project Empower, told PlusNews that her group realised that tackling high-risk behaviour was "not about the condom" but about people's "social fabric", such as communication within relationships, gender imbalances and societal perceptions of sexuality.

Project Empower decided to move beyond AIDS as a topic and began organising workshops to talk more broadly about cultural restrictions, and issues of taking control, tolerance and social power. The subject of HIV/AIDS is discussed only indirectly.

"People need to engage in the learning process and explore what the newly gained knowledge means for them on a personal level," Washington explained.

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