SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Cambodia has become the first country in the Asia-Pacific region to reach a key milestone - 95% of people living with HIV there know their status. Ninety-five percent of them are on medication. Of those, 95% have a viral load so low, they have almost zero risk of passing it on. NPR's Durrie Bouscaren takes a look. And just a note to listeners, this story includes brief mentions of sexual assault.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Non-English language spoken).
DURRIE BOUSCAREN: In a video she sends me on WhatsApp, Dalish Prum's 8-year-old daughter reads a schoolbook.
DALISH PRUM: She's just reading her lesson for her teacher.
BOUSCAREN: Prum is a community health worker for CPN+, one of Cambodia's largest networks for people living with HIV. When she was 15 years old, Prum was abducted and raped. She was rescued and later tested for HIV. The test came back positive.
PRUM: You know, I cried almost every day for three years.
BOUSCAREN: Prum was still in high school. Her family was supportive, but every night, the worst things would run through her mind.
PRUM: I will be - die soon. I cannot learn. I cannot study, I cannot graduate. I cannot do anything. I cannot make a family.
BOUSCAREN: Prum did finish her studies, got a job, fell in love. She married and had a baby girl. She's strict about her medication, which keeps the levels of the virus in her body at undetectable levels, meaning she can't pass it on. And this is what Prum tells other people living with HIV - it gets better.
PRUM: Honestly, please love yourself.
BOUSCAREN: In the late '90s, Cambodia had a huge HIV problem, and the government decided it had to act. Almost 200,000 people had been infected with HIV, many of them child victims of sex trafficking. In 1996, NPR reporter Mary Kay Magistad interviewed some of them in Phnom Penh.
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MARY KAY MAGISTAD: Li Na (ph) is a young Cambodian woman who was tricked into prostitution, much like Emm (ph) was. She says one of her first customers was a senior police official.
BOUSCAREN: How they contracted HIV contributed to the discrimination and isolation many HIV-positive people faced. So the disease spread, says Chamreun Choub Sok. He's the executive director of KHANA, a network of programs supporting people with HIV.
CHAMREUN CHOUB SOK: Before 2000, so many people die, and because no medication, no program.
BOUSCAREN: He says Cambodia had the political will to do this. It's a constitutional monarchy, and both the king and the elected government wanted to prioritize the fight against AIDS. Then KHANA, the nonprofit, decided on a strategy, and it was relatively low-cost - hire people already living with HIV who are part of high-risk groups and ask them how to get others into testing and treatment.
CHOUB SOK: Reaching their peer. This is a way that can bring the people to come to services early.
BOUSCAREN: Many people with HIV were women working in nightclubs. So they created a program called SMARTGirl, where they offered HIV tests at their former places of work.
CHOUB SOK: They become lay counselor. They become the people who go and conduct outreach.
BOUSCAREN: Male outreach counselors created their effort for gay men, called it MStyle. And transgender women made their own.
CHOUB SOK: Because they look like beautiful girl, so they call themselves Srey Sros.
BOUSCAREN: Srey Sros - beautiful woman in the Khmer language. Annette Sohn is the director of TREAT Asia, a network of clinics and researchers serving people with HIV based in Thailand. She says Cambodia tackled something that the Asia-Pacific region still struggles with.
ANNETTE SOHN: For me, the Number 1 challenge continues to be stigma.
BOUSCAREN: That shame prevents them from getting that test and getting into treatment.
SOHN: Sometimes people will think that, well, Asia is a mix of low-, middle-, high-income countries, economies. Like, why is it that we are not able to manage HIV control?
BOUSCAREN: She says that's what Cambodia did right. They realized that people seek healthcare where they feel accepted. Durrie Bouscaren, NPR News, Washington.
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