The South African Marang Men's Project

In order to manage the South African HIV epidemic, government and civil society must not only respond to HIV within the general population but must also develop focused programmes that address the needs of key populations such as men who have sex with men (MSM). In fact, the National Strategic Plan on HIV, STIs and TB 2012-2016 (SANAC 2011) calls for the inclusion, in the national response to the HIV epidemic in South Africa, of all key populations at higher risk of HIV exposure. Without considering key populations such as MSM, any response to HIV in South Africa will prove inadequate and fruitless. To date, there has been a lack of up-to-date surveillance data, collected from several sites using the same sampling approach, on the prevalence of HIV and associated risk behaviours among MSM in South Africa; and hence this study was undertaken to fill this information gap. The study, called the Marang Men's Project, was implemented among MSM in the three largest cities of South Africa: Cape Town in the Western Cape, Durban in KwaZulu-Natal and Johannesburg in Gauteng.