Peer education could help young people in Yemen fight AIDS

Participants in the AIDS/HIV awareness workshop have a long way to go to inform the public.

Raising awareness among young people about HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and AIDS itself, and giving them the necessary skills to protect themselves is the best way to prevent the disease from spreading through societies, say health experts.

This was the motivation for a new training for youth held this month in Sana’a.
The training course was organized by the International Development Foundation and PROGRESSIO, a UK-based international organization working for sustainable development and the eradication of poverty, in cooperation with UNICEF in the IDF Training Centre. 

“IDF isn’t a governmental organization working in the health and human development fields. It carries out various projects related to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees,” said Sameer al-Jobari, a representative of the IDF organization. 

The course is designed to train people within communities by targeting young people, who can work as educators and mentors to transfer the skill and knowledge to others, in order to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. 

The workshop also aimed to enable participants to better understand the concepts of skills-based, peer-led health education methodologies. It taught them how to acquire accurate information about HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections, to develop communication and group working skills; to acquire the skills to facilitate a range of interactive methodologies to be used in training peer educators; and to acquire basic knowledge of a peer education programme development. 

“Before this workshop, we did not have a lot of important information about HIV/ AIDS. But I think that this training gave us a complete and sufficient awareness of such a dangerous disease,” said Ammar Hezam, 23, a peer educator. “I thought that this disease could be transmitted by sharing food and drink with some people infected with HIV/ AIDS and I thought that the infection could be spread through the air among people. Now, I know the actual ways this disease can be transmitted.” 

HIV and AIDS are spread by intimate physical contact that involves the exchange of bodily fluids such as blood or semen. Unprotected sex, blood transfusions, and intravenous drug use can transmit the disease. The workshop, entitled Training on Peer Education and Life Skills for Young People for the Prevention of HIV/AIDS, included 20 young participants, half of them male, half of them female, aged 15 to 24 years, from the project area in Sana’a (Safia).  Presently this project is being implemented in Sana’a, Aden, Taiz and Hodeidah governorates Peer education is the process whereby well-trained and motivated young people undertake informal or organized educational activities with their peers (those similar to themselves in age, background or interests) over a period of time, aimed at developing their knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and skills and enabling them to protect themselves from HIV/AIDS. 

Young people help each other to understand how AIDS is spread and can be prevented.

“Peer education is never based on very structured sessions, it is informal and does not require special situations and conditions it can happen anywhere,” said HIV/AIDS Coordinator of PROGRESSIO, Mr. Irfan Akhtar.  

Peer education can take place in small groups or through individual contact and in a variety of settings: in schools and universities, clubs, barbers shops, beauty parlours, qat sessions, workplaces, on the street in a shelter, or wherever people gather and feel comfortable to talk about HIV/AIDS.

“The first people I will start to educate are my family in my own home. Then, I will move on to girls living in my quarter. I will try to make some sessions for them in the homes located in the same quarter. Moreover, I will try to exploit the chances available for me in wedding parties where a lot of women and girls go,” said Ama al-Khaliq Ubadi, 21, a peer educator.       

Life Skills is a new subject that was added to the awareness of the HIV/AIDS in 2004. It was applied in Aden governorate as an experiment on how to mix such skills with peer educators’ lives, so that they become able to gain these skills, then to be able to protect themselves from infection with HIV/AIDS. The life skills include many things such as how to solve problems, how to make decisions to avoid HIV/ AIDS infection, and how to respect diverse viewpoints.  

The principle of peer education is based on oral interpersonal communication and informal discussion. There are ways in which the message on HIV/AIDS can be easily passed on from one friend to another and from one place to another to raise awareness about preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS. Yemen is mainly an oral society and thus important information is often exchanged in casual conversation. 

“When I came to Yemen, I found that Yemen is a very friendly country where people are very sociable and love to talk about many different issues. So nothing stood in our way to talk about HIV/ AIDS,” said Akhtar. “The other existing opportunity for peer education is the habit of chewing qat, which does have a negative impact on health and the economy but remains an integral part of life for many people in Yemen, we can take advantage of this habit to establish HIV/AIDS programmes through peer education,” he said. 

Ideal peer educators ought to have the ability to communicate with their peers, good interpersonal skills including listening skills, a concerned attitude and respect for people affected by HIV/AIDS, a non-judgmental attitude, and a similar background to the target, including age, sex and social class. 

Participants in the training were also chosen because they were accepted and respected by the target group, motivated to work on a voluntary basis, able to understand the need of vulnerable groups, and able to reach out to the community for information sharing. 

The opening ceremony included a speech by Mr. Abdulla al-Syari, country representative of PROGRESSIO. He explained the goal of the project, which aims to improve the capacities of partner NGOs and civil society organizations in gaining skills, experience and effectiveness to address HIV and AIDS in Yemen through improved advocacy capacities and better collaborations.

Dr. Fouzia Gharama, Director of the National AIDS programme, spoke at the closing ceremony. She gave an overview of the National AIDS Programme’s services and strategies for working with HIV/AIDS in Yemen. Later, she awarded certificates to the participants for completing the training course on HIV/AIDS.

The role of gender is an essential part of HIV/AIDS training, as gender plays a major role in transmission of HIV/AIDS. Although both men and women with AIDS face discrimination, women are often treated even worse than men by society. Also, women are at greater risk than men, as they have less power in society and less control over their lives.

If the HIV/AIDS epidemic is to be dealt with comprehensively, interventions need to address the particular concerns of women. 

In some sessions, the trainer focused on various aspects of vulnerability to HIV/AIDS among women, among them the physiological fact that women’s risk of infection is higher. 

Other factors are socio-cultural, reflecting different roles, norms, differences in economic power relations between men and women, all of which contribute to the spread of AIDS. 

Significantly, gender inequality contributes to women’s greater vulnerability to HIV/AIDS. Women should also have equal access to information in order to prevent the transmission of HIV/AIDS, said trainers. At the same time people should be gender sensitive when talking about HIV/AIDS.

The training was comprised of sessions on explaining the basics of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, gender sensitivity in HIV/AIDS programmes, how to deal with people living with HIV/AIDS, communication skills for peer educators, what a peer education is, the need for peer education, opportunities for peer education and the role of peer educators in the local cultural context for HIV/AIDS prevention. There have also been comprehensive and participatory sessions on Life Skills for young people on the prevention of HIV/AIDS.

Related Content

•  Drug use in East and South-East Asia a growing problem
•  Recap of Yemen's environmental issues in 2008
•  World Aids Day celebrations call for urgent steps to deal with disease
•  Screw Worm Fly: new threat to livestock in Yemen
•  Yemen: Gateway for early humans in their journey out of Africa
•  Stop AIDS. Keep the Promise
•  Another three-toed dinosaur walked in Arhab
•  World Toilet Day
•  Fighting AIDS and misinformation remains an international concern
•  Poverty and water discussed in recent analysis