Countless millions of families — in Africa and elsewhere — now live under the shadow of HIV. The loss of so many adults in the prime of their lives deprives children and societies of our most fundamental bonds: between parents and their children and from one generation to the next.

In 2002, PCI’s vital work and methodology received major recognition through the publication of Combating AIDS: Communication Strategies in Action written by researchers Arvind Singhal and Everett M. Rogers. Combating AIDS recognizes the essential need for strategic and targeted health communications in every society, but especially in countries where the AIDS pandemic is raging almost unchecked.

According to Singhal and Rogers, the world is making “poor use” of proven communications strategies for HIV/AIDS prevention. Hundreds of AIDS prevention programs commonly found in most large cities and developing countries list thousands of such frontline efforts to fight the epidemic. “But these operations would save many more lives if they adopted communications strategies based on proven theoretical frameworks to reach and educate targeted populations,” the authors say.

HIV/AIDS prevention behavior and education are primary themes in PCI’s entertainment-education programs. Through storytelling and behavior modeling, the dramas mirror the habits, beliefs, and local attitudes that research shows contribute to the spread of HIV.

In Kenya, over two million adults are infected with HIV. Young people are at extreme risk of both HIV infection and early pregnancy. PCI’s program Ushikwapo Shikamana (Kiswahili for “If Assisted, Assist Yourself”) reaches 14.5 million listeners twice a week through the national radio network of the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation, with a back-to-back repeat episode once a week. Ushikwapo also runs as a regular comic strip in Taifa Leo, the nation’s leading Kiswahili daily.

Rated among the top four drama programs on the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation’s Kiswahili radio service, Ushikwapo is now in its fifth year of chronicling the hopes, joys, fears and sadness that real Kenyans face every day. Poverty, entrenched social attitudes, lack of educational opportunity, and illness, including that brought on by HIV and other infections, are all too common realities.

In 2002, Ushikwapo Shikamana highlighted not only HIV/AIDS prevention behavior, an ongoing theme, but the fears and prejudices that often isolate people living with HIV or AIDS. A key storyline followed the couple Haiba and Sineno, who are HIV positive. Initially, Haiba and Sineno suffer many of the mistreatments that victims of HIV in Kenya and elsewhere often confront. But as they face their difficulties, community members — and the listening audience — learned to put aside their fears. They also learned effective strategies for living with AIDS.

Listener groups responding to this storyline confirmed that people living with HIV/AIDS in Kenya are often mistreated, seen as a burden and abandoned by their families. “They were chased away because such people are believed to be immoral,” said one listener. But after listening to the Haiba and Sineno storyline, Ushikwapo listeners articulated changing feelings, “from segregation to tolerance.” An 18-year-old Kenyan noted that people living with HIV/AIDS “should be treated with love and care just like other people.”

In India, PCI’s newest radio soap opera, Taru, began offering life-saving health facts to millions of listeners across the vast Hindi belt in February 2002.

One story finds a regular customer of a prostitute discovering that she has died of AIDS. Mangla, the man, worries that he may have contracted the virus because his own health has been poor. In the second storyline, a local shopkeeper tries to molest a girl child, later confessing that he may be suffering from AIDS. Subsequent episodes developed these issues in detail and listeners reported absorbing significant information about HIV transmission.

“You get AIDS if you contact HIV-infected blood and have sexual relations with others [who are infected],” said a young woman of college age interviewed by PCI in Bihar. “There is no cure for [HIV/AIDS] … we should take precautions and not treat the disease as communicable [in the same way as] tuberculosis.” After listening to the program, this young woman even entered into a discussion about AIDS with her friends, a remarkable action in the context of an Indian village, where talking about “touchy” issues related to sex is considered taboo.

In China, the third segment of PCI’s television soap opera Bai Xing (Ordinary People) will include a dramatic storyline devoted to HIV/AIDS. Ershui, the male antagonist, discovers that he has contracted HIV. During his stay in the hospital, a doctor explains the various means of contracting the disease and Ershui realizes that unsafe sex exposed him to the virus.

A primary message of Bai Xing is de-stigmatizing individuals living with HIV/AIDS, striving to educate viewers that those who are ill should not be shunned or cast aside. Many events unfold that expose the fears and ignorance leading to hostility towards people with AIDS.

In one incident, Ershui’s hand touches his friend Silu’s hand once. Silu then washes his hands eight times, going so far as to burn them. He is so afraid of contracting HIV/AIDS. Characters begin to pass on accurate information about transmission in the context of the drama. When Ershui’s wife Lanzhi learns that she needs to get tested for HIV, discussions ensue as to who else is in need of testing, including previous sexual or needle sharing partners.

Though 95 percent of those affected with HIV/AIDS live in developing countries, 95 percent of the resources allocated towards impeding the spread of HIV or treating those who are ill are spent in the developed world.

But as Combating AIDS asserts, HIV/AIDS is still not fully understood as a major international health disaster. National responses to the epidemic range from silence and denial to open declaration and universal treatment programs. Even with the formation of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, international funding to address the many national realities of these diseases is hugely inadequate.

In 2003, an estimated US$6.5 billion will be needed to mount effective prevention and care programs around the world. To achieve this, amounts from multiple sources would have to double from 2002 levels, when a total of US$3 billion was spent on HIV/AIDS programs.

In many countries, the rising onset of HIV/AIDS still engenders stigma, shame and isolation more readily than effective prevention and treatment programs. UNAIDS points out that “the window of opportunity for bringing the HIV/AIDS epidemic under control is narrowing rapidly in Asia, where, despite well-documented and successful HIV-prevention programs, the epidemic continues to spread.”

Yet countries taking an overt approach to the pandemic have gained remarkable success in communicating the dangers of HIV/AIDS to populations at the greatest risk and slowing the spread of the virus. As Combating AIDS notes, “the fight against AIDS is not just a fight against a biological virus, but a battle against bigotry, fear, denial, and ignorance. The enemy is winning in most nations.”

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