HIV/AIDS and the demand for primary school places

Studies indicate that harmful gender norms and practices, cultural perceptions and beliefs surrounding pregnancy and childbirth, and a distrust of health-care services all can pose barriers to HIV prevention and treatment. In particular, women face difficulties related to unequal gender power relations and stigma.

The Essential Packages Manual was produced as part of the "Access, Services and Knowledge" (ASK) programme of the Youth Empowerment Alliance, which seeks to improve the sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR) of young people (15-24 years) by increasing their uptake of SRH services in Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Ghana, Senegal, Pakistan, and Indonesia.

"Link Up’s experience in Uganda demonstrates the success empowered young people living with HIV can have in achieving greater access to SRHR and HIV services for their peers. Building a strong team of peer educators who were visible and proud of their work proved the foundation for service provision in the project.”

The need for HIV prevention efforts to more explicitly incorporate program elements to address gender inequality and violence has been repeatedly articulated, and the elimination of sexual and gender-based violence has been identified by the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) as being one of the core pillars of HIV prevention.

SASA! is a community mobilisation intervention developed in Uganda to prevent VAW and HIV/AIDS. SASA! is an evidenced-based methodology that takes a gender relational approach by working at multiple social levels with a range of stakeholders.