My health, my faith - HIV prevention in the church
Almost one in three new HIV infections in Germany involves a migrant (RKI 2015). The majority of these people come from sub-Saharan African countries. As the infections are not only brought from the countries of origin, but also occur in Germany in around 40% of those affected and the proportion of "late presenters" is high, HIV prevention services must be better tailored to the needs of migrants.
"Deine Gesundheit, Dein Glaube" (2015 - 2019) is a participatory project that aims to inform people from sub-Saharan African countries about existing prevention, testing and treatment services in Germany and to promote their solidarity with affected people. The project is being implemented by Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe (DAH) in close cooperation with the African Health & HIV Network in Germany (AGHNiD), African pastors, AIDS service organizations and health authorities at eight locations (Berlin, Bremen, Essen, Saarbrücken, Hamburg, Dortmund, Magdeburg and Cologne). The participating community partners receive technical and methodological support to implement HIV prevention in African church communities in a participatory manner.
Teams consisting of AGHNiD representatives, African pastors and health authorities and/or AIDS service organizations were formed at the 8 locations. Together, they developed a concept for communicating preventative messages in the church setting and developed scenarios for the mobile theater group AfroLeben+. between 2016 and 2018, 45 multilingual events were held in various African churches, reaching around 4,000 people. The results of the first project phase were evaluated on a participatory and cross-case basis and quality standards for prevention events in African churches were developed. The implementation of further events and media for African pastors and communities is planned for 2018 and 2019.
We are proud to announce that "My Health, My Faith" is the winner of the Community Audience Award of the German-Austrian AIDS Congress (2017, Salzburg) and has since been identified as good practice by the World Health Organization (WHO) and included in the WHO report "Compendium of good practices in the health sector response to HIV in the WHO European Region, 2018".
Further information:
Tanja Gangarova, tanja.gangarova@dah.aidshilfe.de