is a project that will provide medical services for women located in rural coastal communities in Central America and the Caribbean and reaching as far as South America. The project, AIDSail, will utilize a fully commissioned medical ship to reach those areas with few resources for women and will provide an immediate community intervention for HIV/AIDS prevention and related issues such as STD’s, domestic violence and mental health.

Services will be provided by medical staff and public health professional volunteers and will include:

HIV/STD Testing
HIV/STD prevention education
Gynecological and prenatal exams
Peer education training
Domestic violence, substance abuse and mental health education

The project will utilize staff and volunteers who are indigenous to the region and who are culturally sensitive and familiar with local issues. Additionally, we will partner with other country-based programs in the region, to bring both services and attention to local issues and resources for ongoing health care.

In addition to partnering with local agencies, the project will provide peer education training whereby members of the rural coastal communities will be trained to identify mental health and social issues and given tools to use for intervention. This will establish basic crisis intervention and peer support programs that bring communities together to redirect behavior and reinforce community involvement in public health efforts.

The project AIDSail, is a venture of Sunrise Community Counseling Center in Los Angeles, providing mental health services, substance abuse treatment, HIV/AIDS prevention and intervention programs, and domestic violence intervention. Sunrise has been in existence for over 25 years, and is one of the non-governmental organizations working in conjunction with the United Nations Office of Drug Control Crime Prevention to enhance attention in promoting health and innovative alternatives to high-risk behavior.