Women are especially vulnerable to AIDS, both socially and biologically. Doctors and technicians doing AIDS vaccine research need to be trained on sensitivities of dealing with the disease in women.
Improving awareness of gender and sexuality issues is crucial to ensuring that an effective vaccine is available and acceptable to all vulnerable groups. KAVI plans to train approximately 400 healthcare providers a year. The providers will be selected from the five provinces in Kenya where HIV vaccine work is being done. This will require 10 to 15 workshops of 3 days, each over the course of the year.
Gender training includes gender sensitization, meaning of gender, impact of gender on health, health-seeking behavior, utilization of services, impact on decision making, gender as it impacts sexuality and HIV prevalence.
Training healthcare providers on the importance of gender will reduce stigma, which is especially severe for women. Providers will understand women's needs to give them better care. It will also have important implications for HIV vaccine trials.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
