The World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean in collaboration with the WHO Collaborating Centre/Knowledge Hub for Capacity Development in HIV Surveillance (Zagreb) organized a three-day workshop on increasing gender-specific targeting of vulnerable groups in HIV surveillance, held in Zagreb, Croatia, from July 5th to July 7th 2011.

The objective of the workshop was to identify potential mechanisms and future actions for increasing gender considerations in population size estimation, sampling techniques, data collection and gender analysis of HIV biobehavioural surveillance among the most vulnerable groups in low and concentrated epidemics. In addition to WHO, three regional knowledge hubs from the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region, one knowledge hub from the WHO European Region, selected experts and UNAIDS participated in the workshop. 

Gender-specific priorities for HIV surveillance identified at the workshop included: enhancing recruitment of female injecting-drug users; addressing potential gender biases in data collection; addressing the underreporting of men who have sex with men; and the enhancement of antenatal care-based surveillance and case-reporting processes to identify risks for women.