‘North’ Learns from ‘South’ on AIDS

During an intensive five days (Nov 26 – Dec 1 2008), the Haitian team took part in 27 small-group meetings with 20 Vancouver organisations, involving about 50 people from the city’s AIDS community, as well as public health officials, researchers and front-line workers in hospitals, clinics, drug centres and anti-poverty programmes.

The Haiti exchange was designed as a follow up to ‘AIDS in Two Cities’ produced by Panos in 2006 in which paired photographs from Port-au-Prince and Vancouver were used to show the similarity of HIV-AIDS in one of the richest cities in the world and in one of the poorest.

Traditionally, rich countries send “experts” to “train” their Third World counterparts, but the Panos project deliberately challenged this patronising paradigm. The Haitian team included people living with HIV-AIDS, directors of NGOs, two doctors, a nurse, a psychiatric counsellor, a journalist and three members of a youth theatre troupe who shared their expertise and experience on a basis of equality.

The Haiti Exchange was a joint project of Panos Canada and Panos Caribbean, within the Panos Global AIDS Programme.