HIV Awareness raising in prisons and communities

We often share specific stories of change. Today, we thought it would be good to give an overview of why we raise awareness. And what the outcomes have been in 2024. 

Rather than counseling, training, and supporting HIV-infected people, we would much rather stop the virus from spreading. Therefor we put much effort into awareness raising and sex education.

More than 9000 people get infected with the virus every year. More than 1 percent of the Thais lives with the virus in their blood. We fight hard to see these numbers go down. And our efforts do pay off: the epidemic is in decline. However, the prevalence remains high, particularly among men who have sex with men and people aged 16 to 25. And so, there is still work to be done. Every year, we raise awareness amongst hunderds and sometimes thousands of people and warn them for the risks of (unprotected) sex. Furthermore, we raise awareness on topics such as human trafficking, child protection and save online behaviour, amongst other topics. We are proud to share that our knowledge and experience in these areas is officially recognized by the Thai government.

What we did in 2024
First of all it is good to mention that the Thai government had little budget available for awareness raising and HIV-prevention in 2024. Most budget is being used in the economic sector, and budget allocated for HIV-prevention has been reduced. The need for prevention is still high and therefore our teams conducted several trainings for students, government officials and community leaders. Our main focus was and still is youth from 16-25 years old, as study shows most new infections happen in this age-group. Our Mukdahan, Nakhon Phanom and Phang Nga teams all visited several middle- and high schools, training hunderds of students in the area of self-protection, sexually transmitted diseases, and preventing unwanted pregnancies. We also included the topics ‘Child safety’ and ‘save online behaviour’, both very relevant for young people these days. In 2024 we were also able to gather the children, teenagers and adults who are a part of our care programs. We trained those who are infected already in how to take their medication, to prevent them from spreading the virus to others.

Result of the programme
The programs were well received overall. In total, over a 1000 people—including students, teachers, child protection workers, and government officials— received training from Siam-Care on topics such as safe sex, child protection, and human trafficking. Pre- and post-training assessments indicate that participants significantly increased their knowledge and gained a much better understanding of the subjects covered.