AEGiS-14IAC: Developing local response to HIV: Interactive cinema as a tool for research and community commitment in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

14th International AIDS Conference

Barcelona, Spain - July 7-12, 2002

Developing local response to HIV: Interactive cinema as a tool for research and community commitment in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

Int Conf AIDS 2002 Jul 7-12; 14:(abstract no.. E11479)

Huygens P, Berthe A, Serelle D, Goldblat B, Ouattara S, Sanogo J, Traore K, Dolly C, Ouedraogo D, Yaro S, Nagot N, Cazal-Gamelsky R, Traore A, Hien SR
Centre Muraz, Bobo Dioulasso, Burkina Faso

BACKGROUND: Most IEC/CCC strategies on HIV were designed as part of medical programmes on AIDS and often implemented by para-medical staff or social workers. Answering community's needs to better understand HIV/AIDS and its prevention, health education was usually delivered as ready-made-packages, without considering the systemic nature of knowledge and the need for dialectic communication with local communities .

METHOD: In 2002, interactive cinema on HIV prevention was organised in 10 neighbourhoods of Bobo Dioulasso, Burkina Faso. Main results from two socio-anthropological studies were scripted in a film presented as part of an interactive framework encouraging conflicting opinions from the audience. Debates were tape-recorded whilst 5 social scientists collected the feed-back from the audience through focus group discussions, short questionnaires and in-depth interviews.

RESULTS: About 20000 socially diversified individuals were directly mobilised from popular settings where they live and sensitised to HIV risk and prevention. Initially, the audience was asking naïve questions, suggesting low level of awareness of the epidemic. However, collecting the feed-back, researchers noted that these questions reflected merely the audience's expectations for ready-made-solutions from the medical world. Reorienting the debate according to the research results presented in the film, gender and age-classes were challenged to face each others about, e.g., women's vulnerability, older men's responsibility in HIV transmission, gender power relationships as determinants for unprotected sex, condom use and accessibility, stigmatisation of persons living with HIV and HIV testing and care.

CONCLUSIONS: Interactive cinema proved being a powerful strategy to communicate research results with stakeholders, to collect feed-back perceptions from communities about these results and to generate propositions on how to respond locally to HIV.

Keywords: AEGIS, Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, HIV Infections, Research, HIV Seropositivity, Health Education, Conflict (Psychology), Focus Groups, Motivation, Disease Outbreaks, Burkina Faso, Human, Female, Male

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