Irwin B, Parker J; International Conference on AIDS (15th : 2004 : Bangkok, Thailand).

Int Conf AIDS. 2004 Jul 11-16; 15: abstract no. ThPeD7718.

Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI), Bethesda, Maryland, United States

Issue: There are many difficult ethical issues in targeting HIV/AIDS infected or affected populations for economic mitigation interventions, particularly when the general population is also in need and would like to participate. Is involvement in the project going to identify an individual as infected or affected? Should the project exclude non-affected people from participation? If so, how? Description: One way around the targeting dilemma is to design programs so that the target audience (in this case AIDS-affected) will self-select to participate, while non-affected household will choose not to participate. One such self-targeted intervention is the Beekeeping Project of DAI's USAID-funded LEAD program in Zimbabwe. Beekeeping provides a nutritious dietary supplement and added income to participants. In addition, beekeeping has low labor requirements, but has high returns per labor hour input. That said, overall returns from beekeeping are relatively low compared to other more labor-in tensive activities, and as a result, this is often not an activity of choice for non-affected households. Thus the high returns per labor input make beekeeping an ideal activity for labor-constrained households (as most AIDS affected households are), but households with adequate labor self-select not to participate in the activity. Lessons Learned: The key to self-targeting projects is design. Projects must be designed to alleviate the constraints faced by the targeted household while ensuring that the program is not flooded by non-targeted groups. In the case of AIDS-affected households, activities with high returns per labor hour input, but relatively low overall returns successfully achieve this objective. Recommendations: Economic mitigation activities that use self-targeting are able to reach the target groups with virtually no cost to determine participant eligibility. However, it may not always be possible to design a project in such a way for it to be self-targeting and in such sit uations other targeting methods should be used.

Publication Types:

• Meeting Abstracts

Keywords:

• Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
• Data Collection
• Ego
• Family Characteristics
• Financial Management
• HIV Infections
• Health Services Needs and Demand
• Income
• Population
• Research
• Zimbabwe
• economics

Other ID:

• GWAIDS0037273

UI: 102281489

From Meeting Abstracts