The Humsafar Trust 1 A Study of Behavior of Men Who Have Sex with Men in Mumbai and Thane: Wave - 4 January - 2008 3rd Floor, Manthan Plaza, Vakola Market, Nehru Road Santacruz East, Mumbai India Telephone: 26673800, 26650547 www.humsafar.org
[email protected] ________________________________________ ______________________ A Study of Sexual Behavior and Practices of Men who have sex with Men in Mumbai and Thane- Wave4 The Humsafar Trust 2 Chapter 1 Introduction 1.0 Since the year 2000, research studies have played an important role in assessing and fine tuning Humsafar Trust’s HIV prevention programs for Men Having Sex with Men (MSM). This is the fifth report which studies key knowledge, behavioral, stigma and discrimination indicators for HIV/AIDS prevention, care and support. 1.1 HST Continuum Of HIV/AIDS Prevention And Care There have been several efforts done by Community Based organizations (CBOs) and Non Governmental organizations (NGOs) to response to the AIDS epidemic through the help of NACO and other international funding agencies. Though the National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) has been acknowledging MSM being a key group that need focused intervention, it was only in the NACP III programme that NACO placed MSM in the core group of intervention. NACO also recommended scaling up MSM and Transgender (TG) Community based organizations as a key instrument in controlling the HIV epidemic among MSM and TG community. Humsafar is one of the first community based organizations to have received the first grant for Targeted Interventions (TI) from Mumbai District AIDS Control Society (MDACS) in 1999-2000 to work with MSM community.