Supporting China’s communities of men who have sex with men
10 May 2006
Community-led HIV/AIDS interventions targeting men who have sex with men received a much-needed helping hand when the Alliance brought in Hong Kong AIDS Concern’s Lau Chi Chung to share his seven years’ programming experience with men who have sex with men.
Lau manages a groundbreaking programme for men who have sex with men that provides voluntary counselling and testing services in Hong Kong’s gay saunas. The programme’s strength lies in its being run by men who have sex with men, and its collaboration with the Hong Kong government which provides laboratory and surveillance support. The result has been a dramatic uptake of voluntary counselling and testing services among the community of gay and other men who have sex with men, and more accurate data on the epidemic.
Lau delivered a two-day workshop in March on prevention programming for men who have sex with men in Kunming. It was attended by men from community groups supported by the Alliance and Family Health International. Population Services International joined in with a session on how to use the female condom. Lau also attended outreach sessions delivered by the Kunming Colourful Sky group and conducted individual intervention programming discussions with Alliance-supported groups of men who have sex with men from Chengdu, Guiyang and Kunming.
Lau was well placed to give practical advice about how to address challenges and obstacles, given his experience in overseeing the development of a community-led intervention among men who have sex with men from its early days of information dissemination through to a multi-faceted programme of outreach, voluntary counselling and testing, community liaison, internet broadband service and peer leader training.
Participants were counselled against the tendency to target sectors of the community that are easier to reach in preference to those with higher vulnerability. Lau stressed the importance of accessing men in public sex environments and showed how persistent outreach over a period of years saw the attitude of Hong Kong’s gay sauna owners change from scepticism and disinterest to acceptance and support.
The Alliance hopes that as well as providing important technical know-how, the training also inspired local group of men who have sex with men and demonstrated of the power of community-led responses.
