AWARE-HIV/AIDS Has New Focus and Showcase Sites

AUGUST 2007 — Action for West Africa Region-HIV/AIDS (AWARE-HIV/AIDS) is shifting its focus to coordinating and harmonizing cross-border efforts, sharing experiences, engaging in joint planning to expand interventions, and completing research required to inform interventions.  Midterm review recommendations and new directions from USAID spurred the shift from a concentration on supporting service delivery activities that benefit cross-border and mobile populations, particularly truckers and populations in truck stops.

New Country Groupings and Showcase Sites
To this end, four groups of countries with common borders were identified:

1. Chad and Cameroon
2. Benin, Niger, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, and Nigeria
3. Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, Mali, and Guinea-Bissau
4. Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire

From each group, AWARE-HIV/AIDS selected a regional cross-border site. Each of these sites will be upgraded to showcase regional implementation of integrated packages of HIV/AIDS prevention for mobile populations. The regional sites chosen will also host individuals on study tours who are seeking to extend these programs to their countries and want information on implementation and lessons learned.

Within the four groupings, the following sites were selected for upgrading: Douala, Cameroon (group 1); Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso (group 2); Nouakchott, Mauritania (group 3); and KM26, near Conakry, Guinea (group 4).

How Sites Were Chosen
Each of the sites is already implementing HIV-prevention programs for mobile populations. Other selection criteria included the level of services provided, the migratory flux being experienced, and the site’s location relative to other countries its potential for being upgraded and hosting tours.

An AWARE-HIV/AIDS multidisciplinary team traveled to each of the four sites to validate the selections, determine their upgrading needs, reinforce the commitments of national partners, and pursue negotiations toward the signing of sub-agreements. National HIV/AIDS coordinating bodies, departments of ministries of health, and local partners consulted uniformly expressed pride about the sites selected and pledged their full support.

Extending the Program to Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone
The addition of Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau expand the list of countries participating in AWARE-HIV/AIDS cross-border interventions for mobile populations, as required by USAID.

CARE Sierra Leone was selected as the best partner to collaborate with AWARE-HIV/AIDS. Project staff visited Sierra Leone and collaboratively worked with CARE to map out sites on the Freetown-Conakry route. As a result, one site in Freetown and another in Kambia, near the border of Guinea, were selected as those most appropriate to host activities. In both cases, health referrals are available and they can be reached easily by long-distance drivers. Another consequence of the joint mapping exercise is that CARE Sierra Leone can map out on its own the Freetown-Monrovia route.

To assure an effective linkage in conducting cross-border interventions, AWARE-HIV/AIDS contacted Guinea-Bissau’s  National AIDS Control Committee and the Alliance Nationale de Lutte contre le SIDA in Senegal.

Reports Forthcoming
A report on mobility and HIV/AIDS is being finalized, along with a TRAC Map study that evaluated the coverage of services, the exposure of target populations to activities, and the consequent impact on their behavior. In addition, another report is being finalized that documents lessons learned about integrating family planning in HIV/AIDS prevention in two pilot sites, one in Togo and one in Niger.