Web Site at the Service of HIV and Development: Remarks on Role, Strategy and Effectiveness

This report covers how the development of a website performed within the planned activities of the UNDP South-East Asia HIV and Development Project. It reviews the objectives of the website, analyses its use and briefly discusses the results and their possible policy implications. The target audience for the website, within the South East Asia region, includes policy makers, programme managers, researchers, NGOs, and many others who are potential beneficiaries of effective information dissemination in this field.

According to the report, "much of the current ‘AIDS and development' work being done is in fact simply an extension of a health-centred approach applied in a development context rather than a real development one. For example, the training of agriculture extension workers in delivering HIV messages and/or promoting condom use is considered a development approach as it uses staff from a development sector rather than the health one. In fact, a real development approach would focus on rethinking agriculture policies and priorities in the face of the epidemic in order to ensure food security and exports." The report also notes that "the use of a development approach to the HIV issue is relatively novel and has received only a minimal fraction of the attention and resources (whether financial or human) in comparison to the activities and efforts centred on the medical, pharmaceutical and health aspects of the HIV epidemics."

The following statement is an excerpt from the report:

The web site is focused on information about the substance of the interrelations between HIV and development. Thus, the bulk of the outputs are publications generated monthly by the Project that focus on these interrelations. These include action research papers such as mapping assessments, best practice guides, workshop reports adapted for general use, thought provoking position papers and others. Another important objective is to provide HIV and development information for the eleven South-East Asian countries covered by the regional mandate of the Project. For a number of these countries, very little information of this nature has been available previously: although in some of these countries the access to Internet is still small, key policy makers generally have such access. Furthermore, the website represents a proactive effort to raise global awareness of the difficulties of little known and often overlooked countries in this region so they are included in debates, concerns and international assistance flows. This last point is important from the perspective of South-East Asia as the mental map of the geography of the epidemic is often centred on Africa and, in Asia: on India and Thailand. It is high time one fully realizes how HIV is spreading to other countries and fully understands implications of this distribution.

In conclusion, the report indicates that the website complements the distribution of paper documents which are still needed for countries with limited access to the Internet. It also notes that announcing postings regularly helps maintaining the interest of users. There is "significant demand for substantive information on HIV and development." There are several hundred interested users per month, from both the North and the South.

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