During 13th of February, a group of students including myself, went to UNAIDS in Phnom Penh to find out more information about Cambodia current status about HIV/AIDS. We met a lady named Vladanka Andreeva who is the country director of UNAIDS in Cambodia.
We spent about two hours discussing this issue and listening to her presentation about the work of UNAIDS. UNAIDS was established during 1996. The goal for UNAIDS is to accomplish the public health threat by 2030 using their sustainable development goals.
From what we talked, Vladanka told us that about 71 thousands of Cambodia’s population is currently living with HIV, and out of that number 35 thousands of them are women. 81 % of them are needed treatment in Cambodia.
There are 5.1 million in Asia and the Pacific and 1.8 million of them are women. Unprotected sex are most likely to be the big cause of aid. UNAIDS is progress towards the goal of 90-90-90 targets, which they are trying to get no baby born with HIV positive which they can have a legal barrier. 46.9 million USD has been funded by the international to Cambodia.
UNAIDS also create, what’s called a Community Based Project HIV which is from:
- Peers to peers
- Education program
- By travel to the place
December 1st is the World Aid’s day. Aids is not a disease that can cure but it is a kind of syndrome.
Regarding to our talk, this type of disease remained one of the scariest diseases that everyone in Cambodia and the whole should know and need to taking care of themselves from getting it. If a person is having an HIV positive this mean that, the person can spread this HIV to others and in which he or she really needs to be careful and get treatment every day in order to stay healthy and live longer. A person living with HIV, aren’t mean that they are not a human, therefore, discrimination is not what everyone should react to those who have it.
This meeting was such a great experience where we learned so many new information and that that information is what helps us to better understand on Cambodia HIV current status data numbers. This also helps us to get prepared for making our final product for this exploration.