This project was implemented in 2003 to 2005. SAHARA’s role was to provide technical assistance to Botswana, Mozambique, Swaziland and Lesotho to help them to do their own behavioural and HIV prevalence studies, based on the Nelson Mandela/ HSRC Study of HIV/AIDS (SABSSM I) that was conducted by an HSRC-led research consortium. The project was funded for two years by the SADC HIV and AIDS Unit with the support of UNAIDS and WHO/AFRO.

Botswana released its first population-based HIV and AIDS survey reports (a statistical and popular report) based on the second-generation surveillance approach titled Botswana AIDS Impact Survey II (BAIS II) in November 2005. The government of Botswana has incorporated information from the report and subsequent feedback in the implementation of their national HIV and AIDS programme and ARV roll out.

Lesotho originally elected to do their Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) survey with technical assistance from the USA’s ORC Macro International. In 2005, Lesotho’s Ministry of Health signed an MOU with the HSRC for the provision of secondary in-depth impact analyses and modelling projections. The Lesotho DHS report on HIV/AIDS was released in October 2005. Unfortunately, this coincided with the time when the SADC HIV/AIDS Unit was obliged to cease operations due to EU funding for the project coming to an end, which meant that the project could not be pursued.

The project was initially substantially delayed in Mozambique. Towards the beginning of 2006, the government made available $200,000 to kick-start the survey. Our official role to provide technical assistance ceased at the end of the project in December 2005 but we continued to provide additional assistance in early 2006 through sharing of research tools and protocols.

In Swaziland, initial progress was good but work began to slow down in 2004. At the beginning of 2005, the Government of Swaziland provided funding of $1 million towards the survey, and planning was again able to start. Final agreement on the methodology was reached in early 2005 and the research instruments were finalised in 2005. Ethical approval from Swaziland’s Ministry of Health’s REC and the USA’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) finally came through in early 2006 after we had ceased participation in the project as funding had come to an end. The preliminary HIV/AIDS survey report was released in June 2007 as part of the Swaziland DHS. Read a press release describing the preliminary results of the survey.

Finally, working together with UNAIDS and WHO-Afro as part of the project, the HSRC contributed to the publication of  the UNAIDS/WHO Working Group on Global HIV/AIDS and STI Surveillance's Guidelines for measuring national HIV prevalence in population-based surveys (2005). This guidebook is helpful to research organisations and individual researchers who wish to use this methodology for national HIV/AIDS surveillance in their countries.

Read more about the project in a presentation given to SADC member states in Gaborone in September 2007.