Nuanced approaches to HIV/AIDS research

Despite the continued enormous financial investment, through both local and donor funding, into HIV prevention and care services in Uganda, prevalence rates are rising. Knowledge of HIV determines both uptake of HIV prevention services and behavioural change. We assessed knowledge of HIV service sites and testing benefits among Ugandans at community level. 5320 adult participants randomly selected were involved in the study. Twelve percent had no knowledge of any HIV service site accessible to them, while only 4.4% knew at least 50% of eight benefits of HIV testing, 35% of those without any idea of the benefits of HIV testing did not know HIV service sources. Knowledge of HIV services sources was dependent on age, level of education and marital status with teens being least knowledgeable. Findings of this study indicate need for change of HIV prevention strategies as well as need for teen focus programs.

Background: HIV prevalence among transgender people (TG) in Thailand is around 10% in 2010. The National AIDS Strategy places MSM and TG in the same category for programming, yet they are very different in terms of needs and risk behaviors. Many data sources do not disaggregate between them and less effort for TG since their prevalence is less. Having exclusive data for TG will help encourage policy makers and program implementers to better prioritize and design policies and programs.

Methods: The data is drawn from the client behavioral monitoring database of the Thai National MSM program. It was collected by outreach workers in 30 provinces from mid-2010 to mid-2011. They were completed after reaching out to clients.

Results: In the one-year period, data was collected on 47,760 clients who were eligible for the study; 10,669 cases (22.3 %) are transgender. TG significantly use condoms less than MSM with both regular (76%/78%) and casual partners (90%/91%) and have less access to VCT (8%/9%) and STIs (5%/7%) services.

Conclusions: Risk and health seeking behaviors of TG and MSM are different. TG programs should be specifically designed to respond to their needs and risk behaviors. TG peer educators should receive more opportunities for capacity building to help maximize the effectiveness of the intervention programs.

This study investigate some of the farmers view on HIV/AIDS, associated with farming activities. A total of 100 questionnaires were distributed too farmers through purposely and
randomly sampled from two villages in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja Nigeria. Namely Kuje and Gwagalada area council respectively. Pictorial representation and different graphicAnalysis.The study concludes that the percentage of people in the farming communities who know about the issuesof HIV/AIDS is high and the form of the transmission is through multiple sex partners outsidemarriage. Hence the need to conduct research that would come up with proper methods of siphoning out the impacts on agriculture is necessary.

HIV/AIDS had started to spread from high-risk groups to general population and from urban to rural areas through migrants. Objectives are to investigate sexual behaviors and risks of HIV infection. Study was conducted one of high HIV prevalence state of India during 2009. By simple random method, 609 respondents were selected from 20 PSUs who made more than two moves during last three years. Odds ratio with 95% confidence interval were computed to assess risk association. Indian Council of Social Science Research had given financial support. Sexual activity was widespread among hotel migrant workers, irrespective of their marital status. Mean age at first sexual experience was 23.49 years. One-third had sexual contact with FSWs in past 12 months and fifty percent had sexual relationship with Non-FSWs. Unmarried migrants started their sexual actions with FSWs/Non-FSWs at less than 19 years. Condom usage was high with FSWs (68.3 percent) than with Non-FSWs (20 percent). It indicates migrants’ perception of chance of getting HIV/AIDS varies according to their partners. Overall, 30 percent of migrants suffered by any one sexual health/STIs related symptoms. Degree of mobility has extreme positive relation with incidence of STIs among clients of FSWs/Non-FSWs and risk of getting HIV will be more.

The activities of non-state actors (NSAs) that work to prevent and mitigate HIV in Nigeria have grown dramatically, as funding has become more available. Increased opportunities, however, also mean an increasing opacity concerning the different sources of funding that NSAs access. In order to gather funding source information for NSAs, interviews with 533 NSA and 48 key informants provided a wealth of information on specific projects and donors.

This study shows that NSAs operate in a complex environment. NSAs both combine funding from multiple sources to carry out their activities and undertake an individual project with a single funding stream, particularly if funding originates with a major donor. A review of the projects analyzed for this report indicated that the donors providing most of the funding were:
• The US Government
• The Nigerian state, in partnership with the World Bank and Global Fund
• Nigerian NGOs

Many Abuja-based government and donor personnel interviewed were skeptical of the capacity and sincerity of many smaller NSAs. While the majority of project funds were not internally generated by NSAs, many NSAs have means of financing their activities through fundraising, income-generation, or other activities, pointing to a higher capacity for funding sustainability than is often believed.