Case Study: Myanmar

Seed money can effectively be used to leverage additional resources for major public health impact.

In mid-1995, with support from Myanmar's official National AIDS Programme (NAP) and UNICEF, Population Services International (PSI) conducted formative social marketing research. A condom brand name was developed - APHAW that means "trusted companion" in Burmese. Unfortunately, fundraising activities met with limited success, and PSI was only able to implement a small, pilot-project in 1996/97, with distribution averaging about 65,000 APHAW condoms per month,

Recognising the need for, and availability and accessibility of high quality condoms throughout a much wider area of Myanmar, UNAIDS provided a special grant to jump-start activities on a larger scale and catalyse interest among other donors to support on-going activities. With this support, the condom social marketing project increased availability and acceptability of condoms, especially amongst those groups that are particularly vulnerable to HIV/AIDS.

The project has:

· identified and researched a range of population groups that practise high-risk behaviours, including migrant workers, commercial sex workers, injecting drug users, and out-of-school youth;

· developed targeted marketing campaigns, including Information, Education & Communication (IEC) and outreach activities, promotion and advertising, and condom distribution;

· distributed over one million condoms in the first three months - triple the previous three months' distribution prior to UNAIDS support;

In addition, key components of the UNAIDS-supported project were to increase local capacity to prevent STDs and HIV/AIDS and to mobilize other donor resources for long-term project implementation. Here, too, the project achieved great success and has:

· trained local government authorities and health care officials in HIV/AIDS, social marketing, and behaviour change and prevention strategies. This training provided a unique opportunity to obtain support at the local level to carry out project activities;

· trained numerous local NGOs and community based organizations in social marketing and related activities to foster enhanced collaboration;

· trained retailers in social marketing, basic marketing theory, condom retailing and provided them with information on HIV/AIDS so that the retailers could provide some level of support in addition to APHAW condoms;

· with the demonstrated success of social marketing with UNAIDS support, PSI motivated the British Government's Joint Funding Scheme (JFS) to provide a grant of almost £500,000 for two additional years of expanded social marketing activities;

· secured additional funds to launch targeted social marketing campaigns along Myanmar's borders - high traffic areas for cross-border trade, transportation and HIV/AIDS.

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