Abstract

Iranian key informants' perspectives towards gender sensitive STIs/HIV/AIDS prevention service delivery

More than 340 million new cases of sexually transmitted infections occur throughout the world every year. The average annual STIs growth rate was 17%from 1998 to 2006 in Iran. As this epidemic has progressed, relevant literatures shown that, gender has a critical element in implementation and impact of these programs. Most reproductive health programs haven’t integrated gender mainstreaming to their service deliveries. In order to explore key informants perspectives towards gender sensitive STIs/HIV/AIDS prevention service delivery, this study was done. Participants including health managers, health policy makers and reproductive health providers were selected purposefully and continued by snow ball sampling. 43 semi-structured in depth interviews with 37 key informants analyzed according to content analysis. Main categories were generated after processing and organizing the codes. Key informants clearly explained the gender sensitive STIs/HIV/AIDS prevention structure in three domains: training gender sensitive providers, facilities and management. In our country, transforming gender neural to more complete gender sensitive STIs/HIV/AIDS prevention services needs structural reforms that make these interventions more effective.

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