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Review Highlights Success of HIV/AIDS Prevention in African Militaries

Navy Newsstand

Story Number: NNS040311-04

Release Date: 3/12/2004 1:59:00 PM

By Doris Ryan, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery Public Affairs

WASHINGTON (NNS) -- Naval Health Research Center San Diego hosted a program review Feb. 18-19 in Washington, D.C., to highlight the successes of the DoD HIV/AIDS Prevention Program (DHAPP).

The review focused on several contractor efforts under way with African militaries to prevent the spread of AIDS.

"This review showed 17 outstanding examples of how the U.S. military can partner with other organizations to benefit our international military partners," said Dr. Richard A. Shaffer, DHAPP manager at the Naval Health Research Center, San Diego. "Examples include expanding laboratory support, designing mass awareness campaigns, developing educational materials, establishing voluntary counseling and testing centers, and helping the host military develop HIV policy."

Shaffer went on to illustrate the variety of programs supported by DHAPP. Gender-specific educational material was developed to complement the existing HIV prevention program in South Africa. It was designed to empower women and help men understand how their attitudes about relationships drive the epidemic in that country.

In Togo, DHAPP overcame the military's resistance to outside influence and began a grassroots prevention program that reached 7,000 soldiers on six bases with educational material, distributed 166,000 condoms and trained 40 peer educators.

An educational film, "Remember Eliphas," was produced for the Namibian Defense Force. The film captured the journey of a soldier through the HIV testing process, ending with him telling his wife about his HIV positive status. A sequel will focus on Eliphas' family, illustrating how HIV discrimination affects the whole country and the military.

"We currently have 36 active programs which represent 36 different approaches tailored to the social and cultural structure of host militaries," Shaffer said. "Three years ago, DoD named Naval Medicine as executive agent for DHAPP, and during that time, the program has established relationships with military defense forces around the world."

The contractor efforts are only one part of DHAPP. A larger part is the military-to-military support, where Triservice personnel deploy to assist foreign militaries in developing prevention programs.

"As we say in Naval Medicine, health is a readiness issue. That is true for the African militaries we work with. If they're not healthy, they're not ready to defend their borders and maintain stability in their region," Shaffer added. "We are making significant contributions to global security."

Last year the program went global and added seven militaries outside of Africa to include India, Russia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Central Asian republics. This year, DHAPP is joining the President's Global AIDS program and is being aligned with the Global AIDS Coordinator at the U.S. State Department.

"We hope this will lead to new efforts and new resources for the program. DHAPP is ideally positioned to launch greater efforts to stop AIDS from spreading around the world," said Shaffer.