Companion Document: Case Studies from St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad, 2006

MAY 2005 — The final report for the Baltic Sea HIV/AIDS Regional Initiative under the Implementing AIDS Prevention and Care (IMPACT) Project summarizes the overall design, strategy, activities and achievements of IMPACT's work in the region from October 2000 to September 2004. The report describes individual subprojects and key regional activities in detail over the duration of IMPACT's work.

IMPACT's work began in May 2000, after a regional consultation on HIV prevention in the Baltic Sea Region. At the consultation, the governments of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia and the cities of St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad declared their support and commitment to fully implementing the "Baltic Sea Strategy and Action Plan."

The Action Plan contains a set of interventions to prevent a widespread HIV epidemic by addressing the needs of injection drug users and by expanding prevention and control programs for sexually transmitted infections, as well as comprehensive and sustainable health promotion for youth. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) welcomed this Action Plan and agreed to support an international technical advisor (ITA) and related activities.

With funding from USAID, IMPACT helped establish a Center of Excellence to take advantage of the expertise of regional organizations and to support the the secondment of the ITA to the Council of Baltic Sea States.