An educational campaign was launched in Ho Chi Minh City on September 30 with the aim of helping the ‘Men who have sex with men (MSM)’ community improve their knowledge on safe sex and prevention of HIV.
The ‘My future, my choice’ campaign is sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and carried out by PATH, one of the largest international non-profit organisations in healthcare.
The campaign will use the social network Facebook to provide more open space for the MSM to connect and exchange information on HIV care and prevention.
The Facebook page of the campaign is at https://www.facebook.com/xomcauvong.
According to recent research figures, the ratio of HIV infections in the MSM community in Vietnam increased from 1.7 percent in 2005 to 3.7 percent in 2013, mainly in big cities.
The new campaign is part of the USAID-funded Health Markets project on developing commercial markets for HIV prevention commodities and consulting and test services, meeting demand of the high-risk group.
Implemented by PATH since April 2014, the five-year initiative also aims to boost Vietnam’s proactive and sustained response to HIV and support initiatives and efforts to reduce the spread of the epidemic.-VNA