Among large sections of Moroccan society, it remains taboo to mention sex in public. Yet with strong leadership, spearheaded by the King and the Prime Minister, things are beginning to change.

In 2004, one of the clearest signs of this was the launch of the country’s first national communication campaign on HIV/AIDS. Unprecedented in North Africa, it is bringing powerful messages about prevention and care to people’s homes, workplaces and social environments.

HIV prevalence remains very low among Morocco’s 31 million people, at an estimated 0.1 per cent in 2003. Yet with high levels of sexually transmitted infections (600,000 new cases were registered in one recent year alone) and HIV prevalence increasing more than two-fold in the 1990s, there is little room for complacency. The Ministry of Health has developed a comprehensive national strategy, whose implementation is partly funded by the Global Fund. The program was submitted to the Global Fund in Round One and the grant agreement was signed in March 2003 for a two-year budget of US$ 4.7 million with the National AIDS Program as the Principal Recipient.

2004 saw the launch of a key element of the work supported by the Global Fund: a national communication campaign on HIV/AIDS. The campaign is walking a social and political tightrope, showing respect for the diversity and sensitivity of Morocco’s culture and traditions while addressing the reality of a disease that, in at least 76 percent of cases, is transmitted through heterosexual sex, both in and outside of marriage. Some of its messages emphasize strategies such as abstinence and fidelity and also, for the first time in the country’s history, publicly promote the use of condoms. Aspects of the campaign are targeted to young people and women, two groups particularly vulnerable to HIV infection in Morocco.

The campaign has benefited enormously from the country’s increasingly strong national leadership and political commitment in relation to HIV/AIDS, including from the King, who has visited people living with HIV/AIDS in hospital, as well as the involvement of the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Habous and Islamic Affairs. It has also been greatly aided by a Media for AIDS Charter, signed by the Ministries of Health and Communications and the Directors General of two national television channels and two radio channels, as well as the President of the Federation of Print Media. By the end of 2004, the campaign had already disseminated 308 national television spots, 450 radio spots in four dialects, 100 press releases and 125 city billboards, as well as a mobile unit which traveled 4,000 km across the country to provide information on HIV/AIDS.

Other key areas of work supported by the Global Fund include HIV prevention with vulnerable communities such as commercial sex workers, among whom prevalence was over 2 per cent in 2003.Here, the work is largely implemented by NGO partners and includes information on prevention, the provision of condoms and information and STI diagnosis and treatment. In 2004, this component of the program either met or exceeded all of its key targets. Over 1.9 million condoms were distributed in the target area, while 172,000 young people and women benefited from HIV/AIDS awareness-raising events, 27,800 from education initiatives and 2,200 commercial sex workers and female workers from outreach activities. During the year, a total of 1,120 peer educators were trained to support vulnerable groups, including sex workers, young people (both in and out of educational settings) and women.

The support of the Global Fund also strengthened voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) and the provision of care and treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS. Antiretrovirals (ARVs) and monitoring were made universally freely available to all those who are eligible for treatment, 706 people were provided with ARV treatment, and services were decentralized, and made available through five regional referral centers. Thanks to reduced drug prices, considerable savings were made from the efficient procurement ofARVs.

The initiatives supported by the Global Fund are coordinated by a Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) that reflects the dynamic, multi-sectoral nature of Morocco’s national response. In 2004, the group was joined by the Ministry of Habous and Islamic Affairs on a collaborative NGO project to involve imams in HIV/AIDS initiatives. New CCM members in 2004 included representatives of other ministries (Communications, Penitentiaries, Justice), the private sector (Federation of Moroccan Businesses and Moroccan Association of Pharmaceutical Industries) and NGOs (Moroccan Red Crescent and Moroccan Family Planning Association).The CCM continued to promote transparency and created a website (www.programmesida.org.ma) to publicly share information on its composition and function, goals, monitoring and evaluation plan, and Principal and Sub-Recipients.