The Role of Nonformal Education in Combating the HIV Epidemic in the Philippines and Taiwan.

The Philippines is experiencing a low and slow but growing prevalence of HIV, with a United Nations estimate of 6,000-11,000 cases out of a population of 91 million, and a 1.5 fold increase of new cases in 2008 compared to previous years. Previous educational programs, employing non-formal educational training techniques in the southern Philippines targeted high-risk groups such as female sex workers and their establishment managers and expanded the program to target males in the community. In comparison, Taiwan has an estimated 40,000 cases of HIV/AIDS out of a population of 23 million in 2009. Taiwan has experienced a major increase in HIV infection among injecting drug users, from 77 newly reported cases in 2003 to 2,381 newly reported cases in 2007. This paper compares and contrasts the response to the epidemic in terms of non-formal educational programs targeted and tailored to specific high risk populations in each country.