CAIRO: As part of the 17th Cairo International Film Festival for Children Unicef held a seminar Tuesday about the role of media in shaping the perceptions and attitudes of young people towards HIV/AIDS.
The event allowed experts, celebrities – Unicef Regional Goodwill Ambassadors Mahmoud Kabil, Laila Elwi, Khaled Abou El Naga, and Amr Waked – the media and young people to share their views on an issue, which is often obscured by misinformation and stigma.
To kick off the discussion, the organizers screened a short film produced by adolescent children and capturing the thoughts and feelings of an Egyptian man living with AIDS. The film – produced as part of Unicef’s Sotna child media initiative – participated in this year s festival.
Mohamed El Shindi, the director, explained that the children were given a tape cassette of a man explaining his struggle to live with his sickness. He noted that the man did not mention the nature of his illness but that the children were so touched by his testimonial that they asked to meet him, even after they found out he had AIDS. Their sympathy for him never faltered.
The children were asked to create an animated short film to symbolize the struggle against the virus. One child’s claymation film depicted a man arm-wrestling with an angry red blob. Another child used a tape cassette to symbolize the AIDS patient and a predatory bird as the virus. After being attacked by the bird, which unwinds the magnetic tape, the cassette manages to win in the end. The accompanying audio track has the patient describing the psychological battle against the illness.
The films clearly show the children’s empathy for the patient. “They [the children] are better than the medical students that graduate and deal with AIDS patients, he commended. “I work with children because any change in society has to start with them.
“I imagine that those with the virus want to scream, ‘I’m a patient, not a criminal,’ El Shindi added.
Dr Ragya El Gerzawy, responsible for the health and human rights office at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), agreed. She drew attention to the terminology that the national press uses to address AIDS patients or people living with HIV: “extreme fear, “detention and “internment. These words, she noted, are commonly used to report on criminal activities, and only underline the media’s lack of compassion and understanding with regards to the virus.
According to the latest estimates from UNAIDS, the joint United Nations program on HIV/AIDS, prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Egypt is low – anywhere between 5,000 and 31,000 in 2005.
Despite this low figure, the lack of knowledge and awareness about the virus could lead to a false sense of security. The existence of high-risk behavior and the low level of knowledge about the issue leave no room for complacency. Indeed, preventative action needs to be taken now in order to avoid a more serious threat in the future.
The President of the Egyptian AIDS Society Sawsan El Sheikh told The Daily Star Egypt that though the number of reported cases are low, they suspect that for every reported case there are between five to ten unreported cases. Many people are unaware that they may be affected by the virus due to their high-risk behavior, or are simply too scared to be tested.
Unicef Egypt recently undertook a survey on HIV/AIDS awareness among 1,250 university-age students in Egypt. The results underline the fallacious perceptions that are prevalent among the nation’s youth.
Dr Wessam El-Beih, HIV/AIDS Program Officer at Unicef Egypt, listed a few of the startling misinformation that the majority of the students surveyed shared: Fifty-seven percent of the students believe that those affected with the virus are drug addicts; half of the students wrongly believed that sharing the same glass as someone who is affected could lead to infection; and, much to the audience’s surprise, 60 percent of medical students surveyed incorrectly believed that mosquitoes could transmit the virus.
Abul Naga spoke fervently about the media’s role in “breaking down the fear barrier. Regardless of the data on the number of reported cases, the statistics show that the number of cases in the Middle East and North Africa region is growing at a rapid rate, more than doubling since 1999.
“We’re an ostrich sticking our head in the sand, Abul Naga stated.
Amr Waked said that, as an actor, his role was to help create a film or serial that would correctly portray a person infected with HIV or an AIDS patient without being didactic, but in a realistic, humanistic way. He announced that a film was currently in the works about a woman who became infected with the virus due to a husband’s extramarital affair, and as a result is ostracized by her friends and family.
“The dangerous issue in all of this is the media, Kabil added. Its role is to transmit information to the public. “We are like “warriors in a battlefield who must fight misinformation by transmitting the correct information.
This seminar is part of the “Unite for Children, Unite against AIDS and Hepatitis C campaign, launched by Unicef Egypt in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Population, the Coca-Cola Company and other partners last November to enhance care and support for people living with HIV, raise awareness and mobilize advocacy initiatives to reduce stigma and discrimination, and ensure children and orphans have access to quality care and treatment.
Unicef Deputy Executive Director Rima Salah reminded the gathering at the campaign’s launch of the global dimensions of the AIDS pandemic. “Every minute of every day, somewhere in the world, a child dies because of AIDS, said Ms. Salah. “And every day, there are nearly 2,000 new infections among children under 15.
