Preparing for PrEP: a new weapon in the fight against HIV

Vu discusses his experiences of using PrEP at a coffee shop in Bangkok
© UNICEF EAPRO/2016/Andy Brown

Vu, 24, grew up in the countryside outside Ho Chi Minh City. Rural Vietnam was not an easy place to be gay. At the age of 12, Vu told some friends he liked boys. “My friends were supportive, but the guy I liked told everyone I was disgusting,” he recalls. After that, Vu kept his sexual orientation secret from his friends and family. When Vu finally came out to his parents, they didn’t take it very well. “My mum said I would die of HIV because I’m gay,” he says. “We stopped communicating for several years after that.”

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Fighting the stereotypes: disabilities report launch

Children with disabilities pose for a photo after their drum game
© UNICEF EAPRO/2013/Andy Brown

UNICEF launched its annual flagship report, State of the World’s Children, in Da Nang, Vietnam. The subject was disability. I was on the ground with UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake as he visited centres around Da Nang and met children with disabilities.

I arrived in Vietnam two days before the report launch. From the air, Da Nang is stunning. We came in to land at sunset, with a cloudless view across a wide river delta and out to sea. Trees and village houses cast long shadows across the waterways and mud-brown fields. Near the coast, a handful of limestone peaks (the Marble Mountains) rose out of an otherwise flat landscape. Here and there, a few cargo boats made their way downstream to the sea.

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Children with disabilities overcome the legacy of Agent Orange

Dang Hong Dan is just three years old but he’s a victim of the Vietnam War. He was born with disabilities because of Agent Orange – a chemical sprayed in the south of the country during the war to destroy crops and forests. Although the war ended almost four decades ago, Agent Orange still contaminates fields and rivers in the Mekong Delta region. It gets into food and drinking water, causing birth defects in children.

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