Tanzanian President Kikwete attends closing ceremony of peer education program

PharmAccess Program Director Geert Haverkamp, on the right, meets the honourable President Dr. Jakaya Kikwete.

It was an honour and a privilege that on Thursday August 25th the President of Tanzania Dr. J. Kikwete attended the closing ceremony of the police peer education program held at the Police College in Dar es Salaam. The program was organized by PharmAccess to train police officers as peer educators for the HIV prevention program for the armed forces of Tanzania. Between the 9th till 25th of August PharmAccess trained a total of 210 peer educators. The President met several peer educators and was informed on PharmAccess’ activities in Tanzania, mainly on the two HIV Workplace Programs for the uniformed forces.

The HIV prevention education program organized by PharmAccess aims to reduce HIV vulnerability through promoting changes in behavior that lead to HIV transmission and encouraging use of HIV related services. The program adopts a participatory peer education approach to provide information about HIV and influence social norms that impact on HIV vulnerability.

The Police peer education program is targeted towards police staff and their families, as well as community around the police barracks. Peer educators from each of these target groups will conduct peer education with their respective peers.

The peer educators will carry out the peer education in structured small group discussion sessions using a curriculum that has been developed by PharmAccess. The curriculum uses a participatory approach which engages participants in discussions and activities such as role plays, rather than a lecture approach. The number of participants in each session is limited to not more than 24 participants.