Annual Report 2008 - 2009 - Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

LSTM is leading an eighteen month
project to provide technical assistance to
the Government of Libya to finalise the
development of a national HIV strategy
and programme of support, backed by
a €1m grant from the Delegation of the
European Commission to Libya.
In partnership with Libyan institutions and
Harvard University’s Biostatistics Department,
LSTM will produce updated and comprehensive
information on the current epidemiology of HIV
infection in the country.
HIV is still the object of stigma and fear and there
is little known about the drivers of the epidemic
among most at risk persons or the perception of
risk and knowledge of HIV among other sectors of
the community.
A skilled team of researchers will formulate a
national HIV strategy that addresses Libya’s
priorities in HIV prevention and care, using
biological, social and behavioural estimates
to guide and assess the strategy, developing
policies and procedures to effectively promote
best practice, evidence-based harm minimisation
activities amongst key high-risk groups.
Professor Valadez, nominated Key Expert, is one
of the pioneers of rapid KAP methods. The results
will be used to determine how to improve training
and capacity building among health facility
workers, religious leaders and young people.
Professor Valadez will be in charge of Monitoring
and Evaluation (M&E) as well as provision of
epidemiological expertise to the field team. He
said: “This project will establish an overall HIV
strategy for Libya and provide it with a framework
for making important decisions about how to
control HIV. It will also allow Libya to join the other
countries of north Africa which have HIV strategies
and participate in the international UNAIDS
community. We hope this project will also allow
us all to better understand how HIV is progressing
in north Africa and hopefully provide us with
information about how to better control it.”
The studies of Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices
(KAP) will be designed to learn about knowledge
and misconceptions about HIV transmission and
prevention, attitudes associated with stigma and
discrimination and high risk behaviours. Survey
instruments will be based on ones already field
tested but adapted to the Libyan context. LSTM’s
LSTM ANNUAL REPORT 21