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A total of 345 young female hawkers (YFH) from six motor‐parks in south‐western Nigeria were interviewed to determine the nature and extent of violent acts against them – particularly sexual harassment, economic violence, forced marriage and involuntary withdrawal from school. Beatings or batterings and being sexually abused in childhood were reported. The most common perpetrators of the abuse were drivers or bus conductors and neighbours and these acts mostly occurred in the motor‐parks and at home. About a quarter had experienced attempted rape, while about one in 20 had actually been raped. The rapists were spouses and boyfriends. Most of the victims did not seek care or redress. Concludes that violence is a major problem affecting YFH and recommends education programmes for men on both physical and sexual violence, and on culturally‐promoted, psychological and economic violence. YFH need to be empowered educationally and economically to enable them to resist violence.

The purpose of this paper is to train primary health care workers to be trainers and implementers of community‐based AIDS prevention activities in Oyo State, Nigeria, by describing an evaluation of the project.

A total of 148 primary health care workers recruited from the 33 local government areas (LGA) of the state were trained as trainers. They were provided seed grants to replicate similar training for health workers, implement and evaluate community‐based AIDS prevention activities. Questionnaires were used before and after the training and the community based projects to evaluate its impact on knowledge of cause of AIDS, routes of HIV transmission, signs and symptoms of AIDS, and precautions to prevent.

At pre‐test, only 30.8 per cent of trainers could list at least four signs and symptoms of AIDS compared with 70.9 per cent who could do so after the training. The trainers trained 973 health workers; the number trained ranged from 20‐80 with a mean of 32.4. The trainers also implemented community‐based AIDS prevention interventions which reached 2,082 persons including adolescents (48.2 per cent), long‐distance drivers (16.6 per cent), market men and women (15.8 per cent), female sex workers (14.2 per cent), traditional birth attendants (4.6 per cent) and herdsmen and women (5.6 per cent). The evaluation conducted after four months of implementation of the community‐based projects showed improvement in knowledge of HIV among all the target groups. It suggests reduction in reported unprotected sex among drivers (from 44 per cent at pre‐test to 18.9 per cent at post‐test) and increase in reported consistent use of condoms (from 53.4 per cent at pre‐test to 71.4 per cent at post‐test) among female sex workers.

Primary health care workers can successfully implement community‐based HIV/AIDS prevention activities.

Primary health care workers can make important contributions to HIV/AIDS prevention and control efforts.

Health education interventions delivered by primary health care workers multiplied the effects of HIV/AIDS prevention and control activities.

This intervention project targeted one vulnerable group, female apprentices in Ibadan, Nigeria, to evaluate the effectiveness of multiple interventions aimed at preventing voilence against women (VAW).

A baseline survey was conducted through face‐to‐face interviews with 350 young women recruited from apprenticeship workshops in Ibadan. The interventions consisted of skills training workshops for apprentices (323), sensitization training for the instructors of apprentices (54), police (30) and judicial officers (25) and the development/distribution of educational materials to reduce the incidence of violence. A follow‐up survey was conducted with 203 apprentices after five months of interventions.

Improvements were found at follow‐up with respect to knowledge of types of violence and sexual forms of violence (up from 89.4 to 97 percent) (p<0.05), and appreciation of vulnerability to VAW increased (from 77 to 95 percent) (p<0.05). The prevalence of beating dropped from 65.4 to 23 percent. A significantly greater proportion (p<0.05) of the apprentices reported payment for vocation‐related work (8.9 percent compared with 16.4 percent). Only a slight decline was reported in rape (5.7 to 5.4 percent) and sexual harassment (22.9 and 22.7 percent). The proportion of victims of violence who sought redress increased from 40.2 to 72.7 percent.

There is a need for more research into interventions that can reduce violence towards women.

Interventions targeted at female apprentices were effective in reducing the prevalence of forms of violence. The data generated may be useful for practitioners and in guiding policymakers on the regulation of activities in the informal sector. There is a need for more intervention programs for this population.

This paper addresses the needs of a marginalized group about a public health problem which is often denied or covered up.