The Masibambisane Campaign is the HIV Prevention "Beyond Awareness" Campaign of the Department of Defence. As such it forms part of the HIV Education and Prevention Programme.

As the military is a unique community with a distinctive organisational culture and as HIV has a unique impact on the military organisation, the awareness media available from the Department of Health was considered to be limited in their effectiveness.

With this in mind it was decided that the Department of Defence would design their own mass awareness campaign that would take cognisance of the unique nature of the military, and that would move beyond mere awareness of HIV towards actual change in attitudes and behaviour. The Masibambisane "Beyond Awareness" Campaign therefore has a unique identity.

As the campaign is being implemented in a relative closed society, it was further decided that the campaign would follow a phased approach, where each phase has its own objectives which should be reached prior to implementation of further phases.

To ensure that the campaign reaches the objectives as determined, a comprehensive range of bio-psychosocial monitoring mechanisms has been implemented. The results of these monitoring mechanisms determine the effectiveness of the campaign, and guide the further development of the campaign.