Heartland Alliance for Human Needs & Human Rights launched the Integrated MSM (men who have sex with men) HIV Prevention Program (IMHIPP) in Nigeria in November 2009, a five-year, USAID-funded initiative to reduce the impact of HIV/AIDS among MSM and their sexual partners. IMHIPP is one of the largest MSM initiatives ever launched in the Global South, and it represents a critically important expansion in the provision of HIV prevention, care and support services for MSM in Africa.

Over five years of implementation, with funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and with technical assistance from Howard Brown Health Center, IMHIPP will work to:

• Support grassroots MSM/LGBT organizations in the Federal Capital Territory, Lagos, Cross River, Rivers and Kano;
• Train and support hundreds of MSM to become HIV-prevention Peer Educators;
• Mobilize and reach thousands of MSM with critical HIV prevention interventions;
• Provide community-based care and support services to hundreds of MSM living with HIV;
• Work with key government and non-government actors to integrate comprehensive MSM-targeted HIV programming into Nigeria's national HIV/AIDS response.

To date, many MSM HIV efforts in Africa have worked through, rather than with grassroots MSM organizations, using these organizations to access MSM networks, but rarely investing in the capacity of those organizations to design, manage and evaluate HIV programs. IMHIPP will mobilize MSM in Nigeria at the grassroots, investing in local capacity (individual and organizational) to develop a meaningful and sustainable response to HIV among MSM. IMHIPP is both a service delivery and multiple-level capacity development program, simultaneously responding to unmet needs for prevention, care and support programming for MSM in Nigeria and developing grassroots and policy-level change to create an enabling environment for sustainable MSM HIV programming.

OUR IMPLEMENTING PARTNERS

• Howard Brown Health Center
• Alliance Rights Nigeria-Federal Capacity Territory
• The Independent Project- Lagos State