Red Cross HIV/AIDS team at the Lome headquarters: Edmund Dossou, Director Blaise Sedohm, and Chris Hammon, Red Cross worker and exceptionally helpful Peace Corps volunteer

Red Cross at the Border Towns

The Red Cross has been in Togo for decades. It has a network of approximately 13,000 volunteers in a country with five million citizens. When HIV/AIDS became an issue in West Africa, the Red Cross adapted to combat it. They train volunteers in peer education and home visitation, counseling, support, and the distribution of products that promote safe sexual practices. Their volunteers vary tremendously in age and professional experience; members of many different faiths and both genders are included in their numbers and recently a number of them have been retasked to handle the Red Cross's contribution to the World Bank's Corridor Project.

The Corridor Project was designed to address the damage that the popular Lagos-to-Abidjan overland shipping route causes local populations. This route spans five countries, 1,022 kilometers, and sees tens of millions of travelers each year. Researchers discovered that the HIV infection rates at border crossing towns were significantly higher than those of rural villages, small towns, or big cities. The reason was not difficult to discover. Border crossings can be a time-consuming affair, and many long-distance truckers find themselves waiting idly and frustrated for days and sometimes weeks. These drivers have money in their pockets and time on their hands. Their families are also far away; they tend to quench their loneliness in the uneducated rural hawkers who gravitate to these locations for the opportunity to make regular money.

Tuuli Saarela, Francois K. Silvey, and Nathaniel Calhoun at the Aneho border kiosk

Nearly one hundred different NGOs are involved with Project Corridor. They are monitored and coordinated by the central office in Cotonou, Benin. The Red Cross is making one of its largest contributions to the Corridor Project in the tiny nation of Togo. They are one of the principal providers of peer education and sensibilization along with counseling and post-care. Other NGOs provide and organize the testing facilities, work on social marketing, handle the health consultations and distribution of medicines, or ensure the safe disposal of medical waste.

The Togolese director of HIV/AIDS-related projects, Blaise Sedoh, explained that the Red Cross began by refocusing their volunteers in the border towns and putting them through a five-day HIV/AIDS training session. They then established modest kiosks at the borders with Benin and Ghana. These serve as work stations for volunteers and as gathering points for people with questions about their sexual health and Project Corridor services.

A typical volunteer commits two to four hours of time per week. The twenty volunteers at Aneho, the border with Benin, are able to keep the kiosk open four or five days per week, working in three-person shifts in the morning or the afternoon. These volunteers report to Francois K. Silvey, their "coach." He is responsible for keeping them on task, and for collecting data about how many people they speak with, how many people they refer for voluntary testing and counseling, and how their needs as volunteers are being met. He confessed that people often call him to ask why the kiosk is not open. Travelers who become used to the highly visible volunteers, dressed in special Red Cross aprons, wish they were even more accessible.

Francois K. Silvey and Nathaniel Calhoun discuss the volunteer activities at Aneho

A second sign of the Red Cross’s initial success is that 75-80% of the people they speak with have taken the initiative and approached the Red Cross. Willing and curious questioners are far more likely to absorb and respond to information and counseling than people who are gathered by the roaming volunteer. For this reason the kiosk is typically managed by two volunteers, while only one is sent to generate interest on foot around the market stalls and bureaucratic offices of the border crossing.

The volunteers find that males and females tend to ask them very different questions. Silvey explained that the females show much less knowledge of health matters and relatively less understanding of contraceptives and safe sexual practices than the males. Volunteers go over the basics with these young and undereducated traders who also tend to express interest in the female condom (which empowers women with the contraceptive initiative), in the possibility of free testing for HIV, and in their options for care and treatment should they be diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. The males tend to ask more specific questions about health, medication, and risk assessment.

The Red Cross and the Red Crescent work together in countries with many faiths

Project Corridor's initial focus was on the eight border towns that separate Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana, and the Ivory Coast. Their work in these locations is well under way and many workers can see what an oversight it was for NGOs and health workers to ignore this stretch of road for so long. In the coming months, they are planning to expand their focus to include the towns along the route that are in the interior of the affected countries. Red Cross Togo is a step ahead. They are already mobilizing scores of volunteers along the route, deploying them to the rest stops and sleeping places that breed the same social problems found in such a concentrated fashion at the border towns.

The Red Cross faces familiar challenges. It can be difficult to convince people to submit to HIV testing. It can be difficult to provide volunteers with the best training and materials, and there is generally not enough information and tactic sharing between different offices of the Red Cross and other NGOs. Fortunately, Red Cross Togo is aware of these obstacles and is currently working under competent guidance with a diverse and well-funded team that are likely to make the Corridor Project a success.


Espoir Vie-Togo: Forging a Community of People Living with AIDS