OFFICIALS from the international non-government organisation Care Myanmar held a workshop in Yangon on February 15 to discuss ways to encourage artists to produce creative HIV/AIDS education materials.

The event – which was attended by poets, cartoonists, scriptwriters, writers, painters, composers and journalists – was held at Kandawgyi Palace Hotel.

Dr Kyaw Hlaing, the program coordinator of Care Myanmar, said the workshop was aimed at prompting artists to include educational messages in their work and to build communication networks to brainstorm about producing creative HIV/AIDS educational materials in the future.

He said the organisation believed that artists can use their creations to capture the attention and admiration of the general public more successfully than health educators can.

“Artists can also prompt people to put their knowledge into practice and can help people remember educational messages and cartoons for a long time,” he said.

He said the educational messages and cartoons must be correct, brief and clearly expressed because people do not want to read wordy messages, whereas concise messages are more memorable.

Dr Kyaw Hlaing said there are still widespread misconceptions about the ways that HIV can be transmitted, and many people focus their fears on less likely means of transmission rather than on the main channels.

“Misconceptions about the disease and means of transmission can also lead to stigma and discrimination against patients,” he said.

He said Care Myanmar will also try to improve its role in developing creative education materials.

“In the past we’ve been lax in organising follow-up activities after previous workshops with artists,” he said.

Dr Yi Yi Cho, a project manager at Care Myanmar, said collaboration with artists is only one aspect of the organisation’s HIV Prevention and Harm Reduction Project imple-mented with support from the Three Diseases Fund.
“The main objective of the project, scheduled to go from last May to this April for its first year, is to reduce HIV transmission among communities and promote harm reduction behaviour among injecting drug users,” she said.

She said the organisation has collaborated with five well-known traditional drama troupes this year to add messages about HIV prevention and transmission into their scripts and performances to educate their audiences.

The project is also working to educate police officials and their families in 10 townships in Yangon, Sagaing and Mandalay divisions and in Chin State about how to avoid contracting HIV, she said.

“The police officials are trained to pass their knowledge on to their communities and high-risk people such as sex workers and injecting drug users while they are dealing with their working environments,” said Dr Yi Yi Cho.

She said the organisation also provides HIV prevention and harm reduction services to injecting drug users in Kale and Tamu townships in Sagaing Division under the project.

Under another project in collaboration with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the organisation is also providing training for police officials in 120 townships and harm reduction services to injecting drug users in Lashio and Mandalay.