The road freight industry within southern Africa has grown exponentially in the last decade and has played a significant role in the spread of HIV in southern Africa, with busy transport routes, nodal points and border crossings long associated with factors of HIV transmission and higher than average prevalence.Research in South Africa has shown that an estimated 71% of long-distance truck drivers spent 15 or fewer days at home in a six month period. Long delays and stopovers at borders and check points are the norm, with lack of affordable accommodation leading many drivers to sleep in their trucks, or to sleep at the home of a sex worker as the only affordable source of accommodation.

Conditions faced by truck drivers provide the opportunity to find sexual partners along major transportation

corridors, giving rise to high prevalence of multiple concurrent sexual partnerships, a key driver of HIV in the southern African context. Sexual networks of truck drivers often include wives, girlfriends, sex workers, adolescent girls, assistants, and casual acquaintances.

In this way, the transport sector links together many disparate communities such as the rural homes of truck drivers, stopover towns along major routes, and cross border communities.  In order to decrease the HIV risk and vulnerability of transport workers PHASMA is undertaking the following activites. 

Regional Coordination and Technical Cooperation

In order to facilitate coordination and cooperation among partners addressing HIV in the Transport Sector in southern Africa, IOM facilitates discussions amongst key players among the transport industry, governments, NGOs and international organisations in the region, with the aim of sharing lessons and strengthening the overall HIV response within the transport sector in the region and beyond.IOM, in conjunction with the World Food Programme (WFP), the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), North Star Foundation (NSF) and the United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), organised a Regional Workshop on HIV in the Road Transport Sector for Southern Africa in September 2007 in Swaziland.The workshop’s specific objectives were as follows:


1. To share lessons learned of HIV responses in the road transport sector in southern Africa, which would allow the identification and agreement upon;

2. To facilitate networking and increased coordination among partners and stakeholders working in the road transport sector in selected countries, and among different agencies implementing HIV initiatives in the road transport sector, to avoid duplication and to strengthen and upscale responses;

3. To outline a way forward (“Roadmap”) for future interventions and activities.

Participants came from the SADC secretariat, SADC governments, the private sector, the donor community, international organizations, civil society, and research institutions. The wealth of this multi-national and multi-sectoral diversity encouraged extensive sharing of lessons and, based on these lessons, facilitated agreement on the main way forward.