social context of disclosing hiv test results: hiv testing in tanzania

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many institutions and individuals participated directly or indirectly in the
implementation of this study, ensuring that quality research was carried out and that all
objectives were met. First and foremost, we would like to thank the United States Agency
for International Development (USAID) for providing the financial support for this study.
The respondents that we interviewed were recruited from different VCT Centres in both
Dar es Salaam and Iringa, and therefore we would like to thank WAMATA, Angaza VCT
Centres that are run by AMREF, PASADA, Massana Hospital, Temeke District Hospital,
SHIDEPHA+ (Iringa Branch) and the Care and Treatment Clinic at Iringa Regional
Hospital for allowing us to conduct the study at their sites and for facilitating the
recruitment of the study respondents. We are also deeply indebted to our field research
assistants who walked tirelessly to different VCT Centres to recruit the respondents and
sometimes visited the respondents in their homes to talk with them. The research
assistants are: Melisiana Masotta, Neema Charles, Catherine Simon, Lukelo Lugalla,
Evetha Stephens, Abella Mutembei, Isaya Joseph, Emmanuel Masawe, Esther Mbwana,
and Edna Haule. We also would like to thank Susan Mlangwa for participating in the
preliminary analysis of the study findings and Happy Grayson Mehalla for typing and
formatting this report.
We are most grateful to our research respondents who willingly volunteered to
share with us their experiences. Their preparedness and willingness to share with us made
our work easier. During the planning phases of this study the ideas as well as the
preliminary protocol for this study were presented to personnel from the United States
Government (USAID, CDC, DOD, Peace Corps) as well as to some officials of the
African Medical and Research Foundation in Tanzania. The comments from various
people at these institutions helped us a great deal in both the design and implementation
of this study. We thank them all for their input. Finally, we would like to convey our
sincere thanks to Elise Jensen of USAID for her support and encouragement throughout
this study.
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