Over 10 years have passed after the ILO comprehensive response on HIV and AIDS in the transport sector.
Since 2002, the ILO has utilized the networks of its constituencies, built their capacity to advance policies, implement programmed and enable transport sector institutions to maintain the programmed established.
The ILOAIDS SIDA Transport Programme held a workshop which took two full days on 24-25 February 2015 in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The participants were drawn from workers, employers and government officials from Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The Sectoral Activities Department (SECTOR) of the ILO in collaboration with ILOAIDS, the IRU Academy, the International Railways Union (UIC) an (railways) transport sector (Training Toolkit).
These toolkits are designed to train transport workers and operators on HIV/AIDS prevention, including change in behaviour, counselling and testing, care and support.
In March 2010, the SADC HIV and AIDS Cross Border Initiative were established, to improve the regional response to HIV and AIDS among Mobile populations.
The initiative focuses on long distance truck drivers and commercial sex workers, including the communities that live close to cross borders sites.
The initiative is working along cross border sites to provide clinical services to migrants through mobile clinics: screening for HIV, TB and Malaria, Voluntary HIV counselling and testing and medical referrals, screening and treatment for sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
In 2010, through a ground-breaking initiative, ILO has adopted a new approach that addressed the economic and social factors underpinning HIV vulnerability in the SADC region: the economic empowerment approach.
This approach does not replace but complements the efforts made in prevention an access to service among the transport workers and the populations operating along the transport corridors.
The workshop found it basis in the need to look at these last developments and to revive and review the use of the Training Toolkit in the light of a stronger focus on HIV/TB, on increased access to service, especially VCT and on the mobile nature of the transport workers, as well as populations that operate along transport corridors.
