Peer-to-peer education is how we start to reduce the stigma
En un gimnasio de Rancagua, cuarenta jóvenes recibieron algo más que información sanitaria: recibieron el permiso y las herramientas para hablar sin vergüenza sobre el VIH ante sus propios pares. La iniciativa Candlelight 2026, impulsada por autoridades regionales, municipales y organizaciones civiles de la región de O'Higgins, reconoce una verdad antigua sobre cómo cambian las comunidades: el conocimiento viaja más lejos cuando lo porta alguien que se parece a ti. En una región donde el VIH aún cobra vidas pero donde las muertes han comenzado a disminuir, este encuentro representa tanto un acto de memoria como una apuesta concreta por el futuro.
- La región de O'Higgins registró 158 casos de VIH en 2025 y 47 más solo hasta abril de 2026, una presión epidemiológica que no da tregua.
- El estigma sigue siendo tan peligroso como el virus mismo: las personas diagnosticadas cargan con el peso de los prejuicios ajenos cada día, lo que retrasa consultas, tratamientos y conversaciones necesarias.
- Cuarenta estudiantes fueron capacitados como educadores de pares para llevar información directa a sus comunidades, apostando por la voz joven como el canal más efectivo para romper silencios.
- La ciencia ofrece hoy una realidad transformadora: quienes mantienen adherencia al tratamiento pueden alcanzar carga viral indetectable y llevar una vida completamente normal, pero ese conocimiento aún no llega a todos.
- La coordinación entre la autoridad sanitaria regional, el municipio, la gobernación y la sociedad civil marca un giro hacia una respuesta integrada que busca cambiar percepciones y ampliar el acceso a la prevención.
- Las muertes por VIH en la región bajaron de 24 en 2024 a 17 en 2025, una victoria pequeña pero real que señala que el camino elegido tiene sentido.
En el gimnasio del Instituto Santo Tomás de Rancagua, cuarenta adolescentes se convirtieron en el centro de una apuesta colectiva. Candlelight 2026 los reunió con un propósito doble: formarlos como educadores sobre VIH e infecciones de transmisión sexual, y comenzar a desmantelar la vergüenza que todavía rodea estos diagnósticos. La lógica era clara para quienes organizaron el encuentro: un joven escucha a otro joven antes que a un adulto con bata blanca.
Nicolás Carreño, coordinador de VIH e ITS de la autoridad sanitaria regional, explicó que la educación entre pares no solo transfiere información, sino que erosiona el prejuicio. Lorraine Salvo, presidenta de Traves Chile Rancagua, subrayó que eliminar el estigma no es trabajo opcional: las personas que viven con VIH cargan a diario con las suposiciones ajenas, y ese peso tiene consecuencias reales en su salud y en su vida.
Lo que hace posible este momento es también lo que lo hace urgente: hoy, quien mantiene adherencia al tratamiento puede alcanzar carga viral indetectable y vivir con normalidad. Sin embargo, ese conocimiento no circula de manera uniforme. Los miedos antiguos persisten, y los jóvenes los absorben del entorno cultural antes de tener acceso a datos precisos.
Los números de la región ilustran el terreno: en 2025 se realizaron cerca de catorce mil pruebas rápidas y se distribuyeron más de dos mil doscientas autopruebas. Se reportaron 158 casos ese año y 47 más hasta abril de 2026. Pero también hubo una señal alentadora: las muertes relacionadas con el VIH bajaron de 24 en 2024 a 17 en 2025. Hans Pizarro, del municipio, destacó que esa tendencia es posible gracias a la colaboración real entre instituciones que antes actuaban en paralelo.
Los cuarenta estudiantes que salieron de esa jornada llevaron consigo algo difícil de medir pero esencial: la autorización para hablar de estas cosas sin bajar la voz. En una región donde el VIH aún mata y donde los mitos aún circulan, esa autorización puede ser la herramienta más poderosa que recibieron.
In a gymnasium at Santo Tomás Institute in Rancagua, forty teenagers sat down to learn how to become educators. The event was called Candlelight 2026, and its purpose was both straightforward and urgent: train young people to talk to their peers about HIV and sexually transmitted infections, and in doing so, chip away at the shame that still surrounds these diagnoses.
The gathering brought together the regional health authority, the municipal government, the regional governorship, and civil society organizations—all united around a single phrase: "Remembering unites us. Acting transforms us." It was more than ceremony. The health officials who showed up understood something that doesn't always make it into public health messaging: that a teenager will often listen to another teenager before they listen to an adult in a white coat.
Nicolás Carreño, the HIV and STI coordinator for the regional health authority, explained the logic plainly. When young people teach their peers about these infections, they do more than transfer information. They begin to dismantle the prejudice that has long surrounded HIV diagnosis. "We train them because peer-to-peer education is how we start to reduce the stigma and discrimination that people living with HIV face," he said. It was a statement rooted in a particular understanding of how shame works—that it thrives in silence and ignorance, and that it weakens when people who look like you, who speak your language, who sit in your classroom, can talk about it without flinching.
One of those voices came from Lorraine Salvo, president of Traves Chile Rancagua and a delegate for the Trans Chile network in the southern macro-region. She emphasized that stripping away stigma and prejudice was not optional work—it was essential. The people living with HIV in her community carried the weight of other people's assumptions every day. That weight needed to be lifted.
What made this moment significant was also what made it possible: a shift in what medicine can actually do. Carreño noted that people who take their medications consistently can now maintain an undetectable viral load, which means they can live ordinary lives. This is not theoretical. It is a fact that changes everything about how we should talk about HIV. Yet the knowledge hasn't spread evenly. Misconceptions persist. Young people still absorb old fears from the culture around them. That's why the training mattered.
The numbers told part of the story. In 2025, the region conducted nearly fourteen thousand rapid HIV tests and distributed more than twenty-two hundred self-tests. One hundred fifty-eight cases were reported that year. By April of 2026, forty-seven more had been identified. But there was also a line of progress: deaths related to HIV dropped from twenty-four in 2024 to seventeen in 2025. It was a small victory, but a real one.
Hans Pizarro, who leads the municipal office focused on sexual diversity and gender nonconformity, spoke to the value of institutions working together. The health authority, the municipality, the regional government—they had moved beyond parallel efforts and into genuine collaboration. That coordination, he suggested, was how you actually change what happens in a community.
The forty students who left that training session carried something with them: not just facts about transmission and prevention, but permission to speak about these things without shame. In a region where HIV still kills, where misconceptions still flourish, that permission might be the most important thing they received.
Citações Notáveis
We train them because peer-to-peer education is how we start to reduce the stigma and discrimination that people living with HIV face.— Nicolás Carreño, HIV and STI coordinator, regional health authority
It is very important to remove the stigmas and prejudices that many people living with HIV suffer today.— Lorraine Salvo, president of Traves Chile Rancagua
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why train teenagers specifically? Why not just run a public health campaign?
Because teenagers don't trust campaigns. They trust each other. When a peer says "here's what actually happens," it lands differently than when a health official says the same thing.
But forty students—that's a small number for a whole region.
It is. But each of those forty becomes a node in a network. They talk to their friends, their families, people in their classes. The reach multiplies.
The statistics show deaths declining. Does that mean the stigma is already fading?
The deaths declining might mean better treatment access, better adherence to medication. But stigma is different. People can be alive and still isolated, still ashamed. That's what this training addresses.
What changes if these forty students do their job well?
Someone who might have avoided testing gets tested. Someone living with HIV feels less alone. Someone who would have spread misinformation instead spreads facts. It's not flashy, but it's how culture actually shifts.
Is there a risk that peer educators burn out or spread incomplete information?
Absolutely. That's why they're being trained by the health authority, not just sent out on their own. The structure matters as much as the intention.