Artur Ovsepayan

Ukraine

In our country, we are not as open and it is difficult to ask people to sing or dance. In our education, we use methods like asking people how they understand HIV and how they learned about HIV.

We always have three main topics that people want to talk about:

“Is HIV a punishment from God?” – “Did it come from space?” – “Is it a result of a pharmacological experiment?”

Doctors are not able to explain what they know in ordinary language. So we have doctors participate with HIV-positive people in our seminars. This helps to bring both groups to the same level and get them to come to the same conclusions about how to solve the problem of HIV. So we try to decrease the boundaries between doctors and patients. We use this game as a starting point and then move to more complicated topics.

After we demonstrate the HIV lifecycle we divide into three smaller groups and ask people to demonstrate the different lifecycle stages. After that exercise it is easier to explain the classifications of antiretrovirals and how they work. It is very important that everyone can explain how the ARVs work and can pronounce their names. When participants can repeat what you have told them, then the information will stay in their minds longer.