SIDA dans la Cité - AIDS in the City

Videos related to the publication: TV soap operas in HIV education: Reaching out with popular entertainment

Sida dans la Cité (SDLC) (AIDS in the City) is a television series that aims to promote safer sex and address issues related to HIV/AIDS in West Africa. The SDLC series was produced by Population Services International (PSI)/Côte d'Ivoire and its local partner, the Agence Ivoirienne de Marketing Social (AIMAS), to promote AIDS prevention practices. It received financial support from the U.S. Agency for International Development, Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW - German Development Bank) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Synopsis Series 1 and 2:

When Jackie learns that her husband, Serapo, is HIV-positive she leaps to the conclusion that he has been unfaithful and leaves him, taking their two children with her to their village. There, she is too ashamed to admit what is troubling her and the village Chief sends her back to be with her husband.

She tells her best friend Mado why she is so angry, having no idea that Serapo is the mysterious “international civil servant” to whom Mado attributes her pregnancy. Still angry, Jackie agrees to go for voluntary HIV counselling and testing and, before she gets her results, the counsellor tells her that Serapo may not have been unfaithful. He may have acquired his infection from her and she may have acquired it from someone else before she got married.

When Jackie protests that it is years since they got married and she is not ill, the counsellor tells her an HIV-positive person can remain healthy for years and can continue being sexually active. He tells her that whether or not a sexually active woman is HIV-positive, she should always carry a condom and insist that her partner use it. So the story continues, gradually throwing light on most of the issues surrounding the spread of HIV in Côte d’Ivoire.

The series' 3 four separate stories promote responsible behaviour change amongst the sexually active populations of West and Central Africa, motivate increased demand for and use of voluntary counseling and HIV testing services, and aim to reduce stigmatisation of people living with HIV/AIDS by demonstrating the possibility of living positively with the virus.