Open | ICRH

The project aims to assess violence related factors that may influence pregnant women’s fear of childbirth and how this affects the mode of delivery, in order to improve antenatal care and maternity services.

A large proportion of HIV infected persons - ranging from an estimated 15% to over 50% in EU countries - are unaware of their infection, and therefore do not benefit from treatment and may transmit HIV to others, unknowingly. There is evidence that many opportunities are being missed to diagnose HIV infections in EU countries, particularly in health care settings. ECDC has commissioned ICRH to carry out a study on HIV testing policies, practices and barriers to HIV testing in the EU Member States.

To introduce HIV education on larger scale, it is necessary to know which programmes are effective in reducing sexual risk behavior in young people and which programmes generate only few results. A large problem in evaluating programs is that sexual behavior cannot be observed directly and that it is influenced by a large variety of determinants. The main objectives of this project are to development a theoretical model of the determinants of sexual risk behavious and to assess the utility and effectiveness of this model in HIV prevention programmes among children and youth in Rwanda.

During the last few years many governments and organisations have been financing and implementing HIV/AIDS prevention projects in sub-Sahara Africa. One of the methods used in HIV prevention that has known a steep upsurge is peer education.  The Rwandan Red Cross, with the support of the Belgian Red Cross, has used this methods in its programmes in Rwanda. Because of the succes, the Red Cross aims to scale-up its programme. In that context, research is needed to study the critical success or failure factors of this method.

The project called 'Integrated Network Combating HIV/AIDS' is a project in Mozambique, funded by the Flemish International Cooperation Agency and implemented by four partners: The Provincial  Health Department of Tete, 'Médecins sans frontières'-Belgium, the Institute of Tropical Medicine and ICRH. The overall objective of the project is to strengthen the provincial health system to deliver quality HIV/AIDS services. ICRH is responsible for strenghtening the PMTCT and STI care programmes, as well as the provision of reproductive health services to vulnerable populations at high-risk and capacity building of the provincial health authorities.

This project aims at enhancing the implementation of criminal and child protection laws on female genital mutilation in the EU.

This project aims at organising a training of trainers programme in Gaarowe in Somalia.

The study prepares two sites (in Kigali and Mombasa) for Phase I, II and III clinical microbicide trials.