Pangasinan cafe also serves chats on HIV prevention

Nurses Junji Santos (left) and Loida Almendares put up Myrna’s Cafe in Dagupan City to promote HIV-AIDS education. The café’s waiters are professional counselors, whose telephone numbers are displayed on coffee mugs so they can be reached by anyone needing help. —YOLANDA SOTELO

DAGUPAN CITY—Myrna’s Cafe looks like any coffee shop. Jars of coffee beans, freshly baked bread and pastries are displayed in its bar. Solicitous waiters promptly present to customers a menu of assorted frappes and coffee flavors.

The signboard carries the catch phrase, “Where we meet, chat and chill,” and that is exactly what draws its regular customers. They have free-flowing chats about HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) or AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome), and how to prevent sexually transmitted diseases.

Myrna’s Cafe is an advocacy store that promotes HIV-AIDS education and prevention. The first of its kind in the country, it opened in June on the ground floor of Nel-Ars Hotel on Arellano Street and has a branch in Urdaneta City, also in Pangasinan.

DOH-certified

Customers are encouraged to speak freely with their 23 waiters, who are actually professional counselors, and trained and certified by the Department of Health (DOH).

They can ask them about the disease or take part in therapeutic counseling. Those afflicted can engage in an environment without staring eyes or the stigma associated with AIDS, says Loida Almendares, a consultant of the Philippine Center for Population Development.

An assurance of full confidentiality is given to those who join the counseling sessions. Counselors keep their records using codes for their names.

Almendares says customers who undergo counseling are urged to bring friends or colleagues. She raises concern that the HIV problem is growing by the day.

In Pangasinan, 66 HIV patients were listed from January to June this year, according to the Philippine HIV and AIDS registry epidemiology bureau.

Records from the provincial health office show that from 1984 to June 2017, 38 had AIDS and 440 had HIV.

AIDS problem

The most number of cases came from Dagupan (45 with HIV and six with AIDS), followed by Urdaneta (36 with HIV and one with AIDS), San Carlos City (27 with HIV and one with AIDS), Lingayen town (25 with HIV and one with AIDS), and Villasis town (23 with HIV and three with AIDS).

There are three HIV treatment hubs in the Ilocos region: Region I Medical Center in Dagupan, Ilocos Training and Regional Medical Center in San Fernando City in La Union province, and Mariano Marcos Memorial Hospital in Ilocos Norte province.

Almendares says the shop has served 185 clients in Dagupan and 67 in Urdaneta.

Customers are referred to a private clinic for testing for HIV infection. The clinic is manned by medical technologists and nurses who are also trained and accredited by the DOH.

Portia Aquino, a university nurse, conducts “campus chats” and provides HIV information to students. She offers private consultations with students, bringing them to Myrna’s Cafe.

“We have coffee, we eat and just talk until they get comfortable enough to discuss their concerns,” she says.

Another counselor, Raymark Perreras, engages social groups on the internet, specifically lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders.

He says he gives his full attention to people who discuss their sexual activities online or who express concern about having acquired HIV.

“I don’t bring them to the café at once,” Perreras says. “We go to bars or other places, until I get their confidence and convince them to come here for counseling.”