07- Impact on HIV: Participatory Strategic Planning Sparks New Commitment to HIV/AIDS Prevention and Care in the Dominican Republic

A highly participatory, carefully structured strategic planning process is involving Dominicans from all sectors of society and every part of the country in a community-based national response to HIV/AIDS. . . Colonel Juan Luis Sierra, the leading military officer in the Dominican Republic’s Dajabon Province, did not want to spend three-and-a-half days at a planning workshop about HIV/AIDS. He didn’t believe AIDS was a problem in the Dominican Republic and saw no reason for an officer of the National Police to work with doctors and nurses on a health issue. But he had his orders, so he went.. . As the national AIDS program staff presented the results of an analysis of HIV/AIDS in Dajabon and workshop participants added their own observations, Col. Sierra became interested. He had seen many of the things they described: young adults suddenly falling ill and dying, police contracting sexually transmitted infections (STIs), women suddenly disappearing, rumored to have returned home to die. But he had never connected these things with AIDS.. . The colonel quickly became one of the most active participants in the workshop, organized for the National AIDS Council (CONASIDA) by the national AIDS and STI program (Programa de Control de Enfermedades de Transmisión Sexual y SIDA, or PROCETS) and the provincial health department to ...

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