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Tuning in to HIV awareness
Media Watch
Television Tuning in to HIV awareness Shuga series 3 First aired on MTV Base on Dec 1, 2013. The show will be broadcast on more than 70 channels worldwide until the end of February. Shuga Radio is also due to air early in 2014 See Comment Lancet 2013; 382: 1620 For more on MTV’s Staying Alive Foundation see http:// stayingalivefoundation.org/ For more on the new series of Shuga see http://www.shuga.tv/
MTV Staying Alive Foundation
For more on Intersexions see http://www.intersexions.co.za/
On Dec 2, 2013, in the small stylish Renoir Cinema in Russell Square, London, 22-year-old Dorcas Shola Fapson is being asked how she prepared for her role as a student in Lagos who sleeps with a man for money and gifts. She hopped on a plane to Lagos to speak with girls, apparently plenty, for whom such a lifestyle is normal. Fapson is speaking at the premiere of the MTV Staying Alive Foundation’s third and final series of the HIV awareness drama Shuga. For the third series, Shuga is uprooted from Kenya to Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, film powerhouse, and hardest hit in terms of total burden of HIV disease. Glamorous clubs, bars, and student dorms and hangouts provide the backdrop—watchers are treated to bittersweet stories of love, sex, and betrayal of a vibrant group of 20 somethings. However, when a sugar daddy turns to Fapson’s character and murmurs “Baby, an orange is not savoured with its peel on”, to try and get her to have sex with him without a condom, the viewer remembers the real reason for this series. At the London premier, Georgia Arnold, Executive Director and Founder of MTV Staying Alive Foundation, boldly stated: “We want to see a transformation in attitudes about the way the world talks about sex, that it’s not a dirty topic or something that should be hidden, but something that is openly discussed, parent to child and peer to peer. Only by doing this will we see a real change in people’s attitudes about HIV and their knowledge about it.” Arnold is an impressive woman, but then you would have to be to get The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
and the US and Nigerian governments to commit to the project before any script had been written. She is acutely aware of how to target young people, and the success of Shuga can be attributed to its fierce targeting of media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, you can even Skype the actors at the end of every episode. Although South Africa has run many television shows that specifically deal with HIV/AIDS (eg, Intersexions), Shuga is the only mass-media, behaviour-change campaign targeted at young people, Arnold explains to the Lancet Infectious Diseases. Half a billion people are expected to tune into the third series. Asked what she has found the most rewarding thing about working on the project, Arnold notes the South African premiere held in the unglitzy Eerste River Township in Cape Town, with Jim Lees and the University of Western Cape. “Lees uses Shuga in this community to open up a dialogue about issues like HIV/AIDS and domestic violence; a dialogue that would otherwise be impossible”, explains Arnold. “This process has helped to alleviate HIV stigma, encouraged people to get tested, and most importantly helped them rediscover their selfbelief.” The landscape of HIV awareness campaigning is changing. The focus has shifted throughout the course of the epidemic: “Early on, scare tactics were used to highlight the dangers of the disease and punch through the ignorance that shrouded the virus. Now that HIV is a manageable disease, opposed to the death sentence it once was, there is a growing sense that the end of AIDS is near”, posits Arnold. However, she warns that the success in the past 10 years has introduced a sense of complacency, but, as pointed out in a Lancet Offline column, the HIV epidemic is not over. Shuga is fast-moving and hard-hitting, and Biyi Bandele (best known for directing the hit film Half of a Yellow Sun) has done an impressive and visionary job directing the young cast. Although this series has been tailored to a Nigerian audience (specifically the country’s 50 million people aged 10–24 years), its themes and messages are universal. MTV’s Staying Alive Foundation should be commended. Shuga raises HIV awareness, encourages young people to know their status, and destigmatises AIDS in a way that traditional AIDS campaigns have rarely done. “On the surface, Shuga is an entertaining drama. But delve a bit deeper and you’ll soon realise that it works on so many levels and literally saves lives—not many shows can boast such an achievement”, Arnold concludes.
Natalie Harrison 108
www.thelancet.com/infection Vol 14 February 2014
Television Tuning in to HIV awareness Shuga series 3 First aired on MTV Base on Dec 1, 2013. The show will be broadcast on more than 70 channels worldwide until the end of February. Shuga Radio is also due to air early in 2014 See Comment Lancet 2013; 382: 1620 For more on MTV’s Staying Alive Foundation see http:// stayingalivefoundation.org/ For more on the new series of Shuga see http://www.shuga.tv/
MTV Staying Alive Foundation
For more on Intersexions see http://www.intersexions.co.za/
On Dec 2, 2013, in the small stylish Renoir Cinema in Russell Square, London, 22-year-old Dorcas Shola Fapson is being asked how she prepared for her role as a student in Lagos who sleeps with a man for money and gifts. She hopped on a plane to Lagos to speak with girls, apparently plenty, for whom such a lifestyle is normal. Fapson is speaking at the premiere of the MTV Staying Alive Foundation’s third and final series of the HIV awareness drama Shuga. For the third series, Shuga is uprooted from Kenya to Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, film powerhouse, and hardest hit in terms of total burden of HIV disease. Glamorous clubs, bars, and student dorms and hangouts provide the backdrop—watchers are treated to bittersweet stories of love, sex, and betrayal of a vibrant group of 20 somethings. However, when a sugar daddy turns to Fapson’s character and murmurs “Baby, an orange is not savoured with its peel on”, to try and get her to have sex with him without a condom, the viewer remembers the real reason for this series. At the London premier, Georgia Arnold, Executive Director and Founder of MTV Staying Alive Foundation, boldly stated: “We want to see a transformation in attitudes about the way the world talks about sex, that it’s not a dirty topic or something that should be hidden, but something that is openly discussed, parent to child and peer to peer. Only by doing this will we see a real change in people’s attitudes about HIV and their knowledge about it.” Arnold is an impressive woman, but then you would have to be to get The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
and the US and Nigerian governments to commit to the project before any script had been written. She is acutely aware of how to target young people, and the success of Shuga can be attributed to its fierce targeting of media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, you can even Skype the actors at the end of every episode. Although South Africa has run many television shows that specifically deal with HIV/AIDS (eg, Intersexions), Shuga is the only mass-media, behaviour-change campaign targeted at young people, Arnold explains to the Lancet Infectious Diseases. Half a billion people are expected to tune into the third series. Asked what she has found the most rewarding thing about working on the project, Arnold notes the South African premiere held in the unglitzy Eerste River Township in Cape Town, with Jim Lees and the University of Western Cape. “Lees uses Shuga in this community to open up a dialogue about issues like HIV/AIDS and domestic violence; a dialogue that would otherwise be impossible”, explains Arnold. “This process has helped to alleviate HIV stigma, encouraged people to get tested, and most importantly helped them rediscover their selfbelief.” The landscape of HIV awareness campaigning is changing. The focus has shifted throughout the course of the epidemic: “Early on, scare tactics were used to highlight the dangers of the disease and punch through the ignorance that shrouded the virus. Now that HIV is a manageable disease, opposed to the death sentence it once was, there is a growing sense that the end of AIDS is near”, posits Arnold. However, she warns that the success in the past 10 years has introduced a sense of complacency, but, as pointed out in a Lancet Offline column, the HIV epidemic is not over. Shuga is fast-moving and hard-hitting, and Biyi Bandele (best known for directing the hit film Half of a Yellow Sun) has done an impressive and visionary job directing the young cast. Although this series has been tailored to a Nigerian audience (specifically the country’s 50 million people aged 10–24 years), its themes and messages are universal. MTV’s Staying Alive Foundation should be commended. Shuga raises HIV awareness, encourages young people to know their status, and destigmatises AIDS in a way that traditional AIDS campaigns have rarely done. “On the surface, Shuga is an entertaining drama. But delve a bit deeper and you’ll soon realise that it works on so many levels and literally saves lives—not many shows can boast such an achievement”, Arnold concludes.
Natalie Harrison 108
www.thelancet.com/infection Vol 14 February 2014