Crowdsourcing based social awareness for taboo diseases like HIV/AIDS

Creating social awareness for sexually transmitted diseases, such as HIV/AIDS is critical. The 2015 UNAIDS statistics shows that newly infected cases of HIV/AIDS has fallen down by 35% since 2000, worldwide. However, the statistics of Fiji tells a different story. The newly infected HIV/AIDS cases in Fiji has been increasing every year since 2000. Different HIV/AIDS awareness programs have been launched previously such as, workshops and seminars. Despite these efforts, there has been no reduction in the newly infected HIV/AIDS cases. Fiji's health sector is still using traditional approaches for building public awareness. Therefore, the primary purpose of this study is to explore the benefits of crowdsourcing in developing the social awareness on taboo diseases among Fijians. Data for this study were collected through questionnaire and experimental methods from the people living with HIV as well as from the young Fijians, such as secondary and tertiary students. The result clearly showed that crowdsourcing can be an effective means of assisting Fiji's public health by reaching out to the remote areas, reducing the program costs, and assisting thousands of people simultaneously.

[1]  Christine McNab,et al.  What social media offers to health professionals and citizens. , 2009, Bulletin of the World Health Organization.

[2]  Patricia N Mechael,et al.  Enhancing 'M-health' with south-to-south collaborations. , 2010, Health affairs.

[3]  R. Ruiter,et al.  The World Starts With Me: A multilevel evaluation of a comprehensive sex education programme targeting adolescents in Uganda , 2011, BMC public health.

[4]  Adrien Treuille,et al.  Predicting protein structures with a multiplayer online game , 2010, Nature.

[5]  R D Nasution.  P5.053 Challenges in Developing Social Media and Web-Based Communication Tools For HIV-AIDS and STI Intervention For MSM and Transgender Communities in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Timor Leste , 2013, Sexually Transmitted Infections.

[6]  Jarkko Suhonen,et al.  Survey on ICT for HIV / AIDS Preventive Education : Are the teenagers forgotten in developing countries ? , 2011 .

[7]  Loverdia Sekarrini.  MOBILE TECHNOLOGIES, SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM IN IGNITE HIV PREVENTION REVOLUTION IN BOGOR , 2017 .

[8]  C. Hawn.  Take two aspirin and tweet me in the morning: how Twitter, Facebook, and other social media are reshaping health care. , 2009, Health affairs.

[9]  Karim R Lakhani,et al.  Using the crowd as an innovation partner. , 2013, Harvard business review.

[10]  Gebrezgi Gidey,et al.  Introduction to Public Health , 2005 .

[11]  Amanda Butts,et al.  Working with the Tabu: HIV/AIDS Education Strategies in Fiji , 2006 .

[12]  Abiodun Salawu,et al.  Contributions of HIV/AIDS Social Networking Sites towards Awareness and Prevention of the Pandemic among Students of Rhodes University, South Africa , 2014 .

[13]  G Eysenbach,et al.  What is e-health? , 2001, Encyclopedia of Social Network Analysis and Mining. 2nd Ed..

[14]  R. Pennell,et al.  HIV/AIDS , 2006 .