The government of Kenya, international donor partners, local and international nongovernmental organizations, faith-based organizations, and many other facets of civil society are involved in activities and services to prevent HIV/AIDS.
Some of the activities implemented by these organizations are these:
- Basic education and dissemination of information about HIV
- Communication about behaviour change
- Community mobilization to change social norms
- Mass media campaigns
- Participatory 'edutainment', including drama and puppetry
- Training youth and adolescents in life skills and behaviour change
- Peer education and youth-to-youth initiatives
- Voluntary counselling and testing
- Prevention and treatment of other sexually transmitted diseases
- Prevention of mother-to-child transmission
- Prevention of transmission in medical settings, including safe blood transfusion and proper infection control
- Condom education, promotion, and distribution
The specific behaviours promoted by these activities include the basic ABC approach:
Added to these is the important component of testing for HIV.
The various organizations and programmes implementing these activities often have specific target groups that include youth of all ages; students and their teachers; workers in both formal and informal sectors; faith-based groups; those in highrisk occupations such as long-distance drivers, fishermen and commercial sex workers; women; married couples; members of the uniformed services; and refugees.
Essentially all sectors of society have been targeted by one programme or another.
One indication of the effectiveness of HIV prevention messages is the high rate at which VCT services are being used if they are easily accessible.Numerous programmes advocate abstinence and faithfulness, emphasizing change in personal behaviour and in social norms. Prevention services to university students and other young people have been scaled up and rapidly expanded through A-B-C initiatives, some adding a D for diagnosis-know your status'.
