Kvakk!, the blog of a young journalist from Norway currently working in Armenia for the Norwegian Red Cross has some interesting posts about raising awareness of STD/HIV prevention. In the first, she says that free condoms were recently given away to young people in the northern Armenian town of Ijevan.

We put more than 100 condoms on the table when we had a mini seminar at the Youth Centre in town, and they were all gone after the meeting.

Having an open meeting is not often happening in Ijevan, especially not for young people. We had put posters in the University and the few colleges in town, and also invited several students personally, but when the meeting was supposed to start at 15 o’clock, very few had showed up. Being on time is another challenge in Armenia… But instead of waiting and just hoping that more people would show up, we decided to try to recruit people from the classrooms and street.

[…]

The RC volunteers and I had divided the responsibilities beforehand; Hermine said welcome, David talked about hiv/aids and STIs, Gorgen had the transmission game and the quiz, Lusine had the Agree-Disagree game (discussions about sex before marriage, hiv, condoms, prostitution and stigma).

Such activities are important for countries such as Armenia where prevalence of HIV in particular is low, but where UNDP warn that all the prerequisites for a possible endemic exist. Moreover, and forgetting that STDs are widespread in Armenia, although Armenians might think that the number of HIV cases is low, the reality is somewhat different.

For example, although sexual freedom is significantly higher in countries such as Norway, population 4.6 million, Kvakk! says that the number of registered cases of HIV numbers 2,500. In Armenia, where society is still somewhat traditionalist when it comes to issues such as pre-marital sex and virginity, the number of cases are estimated to be over 3,000.

Remember, HIV testing as well as awareness of the need for testing is not very high here, and the number of infections in a country such as Armenia, population approximately 3 million, shows that there is an urgent need for more open discussion on this issue as I posted about here.
However, it isn’t always so simple, as Kvakk!! explains.

We had activities/games and discussions about hiv/aids and STIs to raise more knowledge among youth. In addition to give information, our aim with the school visits are to make it easier to discuss sexual health and condoms and to prevent stigma against those who are hiv-positive.

But I guess I scared some of the girls in Jermuk when I told them about STIs. I tried to give the information in a neutral way, but I guess the info about risk of sterility (Chlamydia and Gonoreha) and open sores (herpes) that can never be cured made a great impression on young girls…

Hopefully, the info they got from us can help them to take care of their sexual health in the future.

Anyway, it’s also important to remember that the issue is also more than just about AIDS. Raising awareness about sexual health in general is also of significant importance.

Kvakk! is at http://nrkjenta.blogspot.com.

On the issue of health, Myrthe at The Armenian Odar updates us on the situation of Vardan, an Armenian boy currently seeking medical treatment. To date, Myrthe’s posts have clearly highlighted the incompetence, inadequacy and tendency towards corruption of the medical sector in Armenia. Her latest is no exception.

Until about two months ago, Vardan’s dialysis seemed to go relatively well, but now things seem to go downhill at the hospital, not just for Vardan but for the other dialysis-patients there as well. Apparently, over the last couple of months the quality of medication that they are given, has gone down. At one point all the dialysis-patients were even given a new medication that was supposed to be a start-of-the-art-newest-of-the-newest-best-of-the-best kind of thing from Europe. The result was that all the patients got diarrhea, their blood pressure went up and down, they got temperatures, their hearts started beating fast. So obviously they refused to take this medication any longer. Next, the doctor comes in and asks why they are not taking this medication. They explain and his reaction is something along the line of: “Don’t worry, those reactions of your body don’t matter too much.” Later, Vardan asked a friend of the family who is also a doctor and who has worked extensively in the West, about this medication. This doctor’s reaction: “Why on earth did they give this to you?!?!? It is pure poison for people on dialysis.” Turns out the active ingredient of this medication was something that is definitely not beneficial to dialysis-patients. To say the least…

Apart from this, for the last two months, the hospital refuses to give medication to the dialysis-patients that they had previously received from the hospital for free. The doctors now give them a recipe the patients have take to the pharmacy to buy the medication themselves. This is a very expensive medication that is vital for dialysis-patients. According to Vardan and his mom, it costs about 80,000 drams (about $220) per ampule and a patient needs two ampules a week. Needless to say, this is a huge sum for most if not all of the patients. But then again, they don’t need to worry too much about spending this money, as apparently this particular medication is nowhere to be found in Yerevan… Vardan’s mom has been asking everywhere and no pharmacy seems to have this medication. Vardan is fortunate enough to have relatives in Moscow who are now sending this medication from there (it is even cheaper there than it would be in Armenia), but imagine the situation of those who are less fortunate.

The full post is here. Myrthe also posts a list of the five things she likes about living in Armenia, those things she misses from her native Holland, and what annoys her about Armenia.