Impact on HIV - Building Partnerships - Volume 2 - Nº1 - June 2000 - 06- Impact on HIV: Forging Multisectoral Partnerships to Prevent HIV and Other STIs in South Africa's Mining Communities

By building partnerships and measuring results, the Lesedi HIV/AIDS Prevention Project has translated initial success into a formula for sustainability in South Africa's mining communities. . . The women of Virginia, a mining community in South Africa’s Free State Province, call the project "Lesedi," or "We have seen the light." Once suspicious of the free diagnosis and treatment of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) the project offered -- and of its connection with HIV prevention -- the women now embrace it as their own.. . And the women are not alone. In just three years, Lesedi has grown from a small pilot of an innovative intervention to a full-fledged project with strong financial and moral support from the public and private sectors. Partners in an ongoing effort to replicate the intervention first tested in Virginia in other South African mining communities include Harmony Gold Mining Company Ltd., Goldfields Ltd., Joel Mine, the local branch of the National Union of Miners, and the local, state and national health departments.. . These partners on the Lesedi Steering Committee are working, for example, to expand the Lesedi Project’s STI and HIV prevention services to more communities surrounding the mines of Harmony Gold Mining -- the company that collaborated with Family Health International (FHI) on the ...

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