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SUMMARY
Our work was to support the HIV/AIDS prevention campaign at the Ambatovy Project and conduct an
audit of the subcontractors’ activities in this prevention.
In order to support the Campaign, we organized an animation program to celebrate the International
HIV/AIDS Day with a few Project subcontractor companies on December 1st, 2009 when we targeted
all the workers that had lunch at the Plant Site restaurant. To monitor subcontractors’ activities, we
set up and collected their monthly reports based on a simple electronic report template. To assess
their activities, we conducted quantitative surveys through short simple questionnaires. The LQAS
(Lot Quality Assurance Sampling) method was used to select the employees to survey per company.
We also attended HSE toolboxes, where HSE supervisors transmitted educational messages on HIV
prevention to the labor teams.
We reached about 3,000 laborers during the celebration of December 1
st
, 2009. 15 among 20
companies participated in the quantitative surveys. The samples that were surveyed were mostly
men; 90 to 95% of employees know the use of condom as a means to prevent sexual transmission of
HIV. In terms of knowledge of the three ABC prevention means of HIV sexual transmission, the
minimum score of surveyed companies was 25% and the maximum is 85%. We observed that some
employees having had more than one partner for the last 12 months did not always use condoms. As
for HIV screening of employees, two companies scored 95% and 85%; the other companies only had
scores less than 50%. The scores on employees’ access to condoms was 80% (minima) and 95 %(
maxima) and scores on access to sensitization under the Ambatovy project was 55% (minima) and
95% (maxima). Various topics related to HIV AIDS were developed by HSE supervisors during their
toolboxes; half of them integrated regular STD topics and more than half integrated use of condoms.
The LQAS enabled us to produce the weakest and best performances of the companies, and our
entire action and research intervention enabled us to make some recommendations to the Project
and the companies working for the Project in order to maintain, enrich and spread the HIV
prevention activities.
Key Words:
Ambatovy Project, HIV AIDS, workplace, LQAS
