AIDS control

The project has four components: support to government agencies; assistance to NGO"s; condom social marketing; and research. The project will strengthen the capacity of the Coordinating Office for the National AIDS Program (BCPNLS) within the Coordinating Unit for Priority Programs (UCPP) to coordinate AIDS-related activities in the public and NGO sectors. Specifically, the project will help BCPNLS: produce a quarterly bulletin on AIDS-related activities, improve supervision of field activities, develop a mathematical model of the AIDS epidemic in Haiti as a guide to planning, convene local meetings and two national seminars/forums, and send representatives to local, regional, and international conferences. The project will also help BCPNLS conduct/coordinate a wide range of educational activities, with special emphasis on adolescents. Activities will include developing at least four training modules -- for adolescents, health workers and community leaders, less literate persons, and AIDS counselors, -- which are expected to reach 190,000 adolescents and 1,000 health workers, teachers, and community leaders. The project will also: (1) support a national HIV surveillance program by the UCPP"s Epidemiology, Research, and Evaluation unit; and (2) provide grants to entities that can reach the project"s target groups -- adolescents, sexually active men, commercial sex workers, other sexually active women, HIV-infected individuals symptomatic with AIDS and other diseases, and community leaders -- at the local level. The five NGO"s slated to receive assistance (grants and condoms) are: (1) Centres pour le Development et la Sante, which operates a community health outreach and education program in slum areas; (2) IMPACT/IBESR/CHASS (Implementing Agency for Cooperation and Training/Institute du Bien Etre Social et de Recherche/Centre Haitien de Service Social), a consortium which provides education and condoms to commercial sex workers and their clients; (3) Groupe de Lutte Anti-SIDA, a consortium of private companies which conducts AIDS education in workplaces; (4) Centre de Promotion des Femmes Ouvrieres, which focuses on health education and preventive health services for female factory workers; and (5) Groupe Haitien d"Etude du Sarcome de Kaposi et des Infections Opportunists, a national leader in AIDS research, surveillance, and victim assistance. Under the social marketing component, Population Services International, through a local subcontractor, DOBACO, will distribute a total of 15 million condoms. The condoms will be made available through retail outlets (including non-traditional outlets such as bars and hotels), as well as through the NGO"s and clinics supported under the project. The product will be attractively packaged and promoted through mass media. Sales are expected to offset much of the costs. At least five operations research studies will address topics such as condom brand preference/price elasticity; training of trainers in illiterate populations; treatment-seeking behaviors of men with sexually transmitted diseases; contact tracing; the relative effectiveness of formal and non-formal education among adolescents; and vertical versus integrated community outreach.