The Africa regional stigma training project
The Alliance’s Africa regional stigma training project started in 2004. In just two years, at least 17,100 people had participated in anti-stigma activities carried out by national trainers.
“If you do not address stigma, you cannot achieve meaningful results…because people will not come for information and services as desired.”
Kimara peer educators, Tanzania
Stigma and discrimination have been identified as major obstacles in accessing HIV prevention, treatment and care services across sub-Saharan Africa. The project aims to address this by training teams of trainers who provide anti-stigma training in the community, reaching people who can spread messages to a wider audience to break down stigma and discrimination.
In 2006, the project increased its coverage from east and southern Africa to include West Africa, through Alliance organisations in Senegal, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria. The project also inspired and strengthened other programmes in West Africa through the Alliance Africa regional programme’s learning, sharing and transferring strategy.
The Africa regional programme advocacy work, which focuses on barriers to universal access – especially stigma and discrimination – backs up the work of the regional stigma training project. For example, Initiative Privée et Communautaire Contre le VIH/SIDA in Burkina Faso has successfully partnered the country’s Ministry for the Promotion of Human Rights to support the setting up of a national technical committee, made up of government and civil society partners, to explore the issues of stigma and discrimination. The committee has commissioned a national study to assess how stigma and discrimination act as barriers to HIV services at the family, community and individual level. The findings of this study will be used to develop a national action plan to address stigma and discrimination.
The main resource used during the stigma project’s training courses, Understanding and challenging HIV stigma: toolkit for action, was revised in 2006, and by mid-2007 will include three new modules on treatment, home-based care, and men who have sex with men. Experiences gained from the Alliance’s ACER treatment support project in Zambia also fed into the development of the treatment module.
