A card book that will promote inclusiveness by helping deaf women and youths acquire primary Health care knowledge on HIV/AIDs through graphics, illustrations and images that can be understood by the deaf.

Introduction

PokerCard is helping deaf persons aged 10 – 35 years who want to seek primary Healthcare knowledge on HIV/AIDS by providing graphic illustrations to enable them interpret HIV/AIDS awareness messages and achieving health inclusiveness.

Sexually active deaf persons (aged 13 – 35 years) in the greater Northern Uganda are having difficulties in interpreting HIV/AIDS awareness messages. Currently, they’re using sign language interpreters, but PokerCard is offering a simplified and easy – to – understand graphic illustrations which is making both the illiterate and literate deaf persons to even further understand and interpret HIV/AIDS awareness messages. This is promoting access to equitable primary healthcare information regarding HIV/AIDS.

Progress and Results

The team has held various experiments with the deaf community within Kitgum to help them understand their needs in regards to accessing and interpreting information on HIV/AIDS before they can scale their solution

1. Needs Assessment: We want to learn whether deaf persons understand HIV/AIDS preventive information given to them in graphics illustrations. Results from the experiment reveal that 8 out of 10 deaf adults were able to accurately interpret the graphic illustrations; 5 out of 10 deaf children were able to interpret the graphic illustrations and Youth aged 17-37 have better pictorial interpretation compared to children below 17 years
2. Graphic interpretation by deaf people: The purpose of this experiment was to discover whether deaf persons aged 17 years and above can interpret HIV/AIDS information presented in graphic visuals. The participants were able to interpret the HIV/AIDS messages presented in graphic illustrations with an average of 83% of the participants interpreting the graphic illustrations for the four thematic areas of; Limiting the number of sexual partners, getting tested and knowing your partner’s HIV status, using a condom correctly every time you have sex, and avoiding sharing sharp instruments like; shavers, razor blades, toothbrush, injection needles.
3. Testing HIV/AIDS knowledge in the control group (hearing people who associates with deaf person): Through this experiment, the team wanted to want to learn about the HIV/AIDS knowledge gap among the hearing people who associates with Deaf person (control group). On average, the participants were able to score over the pass mark of 50% implying that the hearing people who associate with deaf person will have a wider knowledge on HIV/AIDS because of the intense verbal media campaign on HIV/AIDS over the years.
4. Assessing the proficiency of Uganda Sign Language (USL) in HIV/AIDS education: Through this experiment, the team intended to learn whether deaf persons in Kitgum district, aged 17 years and above are fluent/proficient in USL in regard to HIV/AIDS education.

Challenges and Lessons Learnt