1 June 2010
PT Foundation is concerned to see the increase in the number of raids on the venues where we carry out our HIV prevention work.
In raiding these businesses the authorities involved are negatively impacting the public health programmes we run at PT Foundation.
The communities most affected by HIV in Malaysia are already very marginalized and this activity will drive them further underground thus making our work more difficult and HIV prevention harder to achieve.
It is unfortunate that the police had tipped off the local media to intentionally seek maximum publicity on the raids conducted. The media hype further deters operators of such premises from taking part in harm reduction programmes with PT Foundation.
PT Foundation will continue to work with the Malaysian AIDS Council on the following steps to support our HIV prevention programmes:
- Document all cases to ensure an accurate record of these activities is captured
- Dialogue with the authorizes involved to highlight the HIV prevention and public health issues involved
- Meeting with specific media owners to dialogue and educate them on the impact of their reporting
- Workshop for the business owners to build their capacity on how to ensure our HIV prevention programmes can continue to run in their venues.
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