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Education For All and HIV/AIDS Prevention in Schools


Global Campaign for Education



Teachers are empowered, through tools, knowledge and skills, to address HIV/AIDS and related issues in schools through the Education International HIV/AIDS Prevention Project.  In a four-year period, this project has reached 17 countries, 133,000 teachers, and 25,000 schools.
 
Affiliate education unions in the 17 countries work with Ministries of Education and Health; the project is funded by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  .

The Statistics

Teachers

  • For every teacher that dies of AIDS, an entire classroom is left without an education.
  • An estimated 860,000 children in sub-Saharan Africa lost teachers to AIDS in 1999.
  • If Swaziland hired and trained enough staff to replace the teachers lost to HIV/AIDS, the estimated cost would be $233 million.

 Impact on Children

  • 15.6 million children are AIDS orphans-a number expected to double by 2010.
  • Girls who are orphaned by AIDS often must to quit school and are frequently forced into prostitution to earn money to support themselves and younger siblings.
  • In sub-Saharan Africa, girls are twice as likely to become infected as boys.

Education as Prevention

  • Education is highly cost-effective as a prevention mechanism with evidence that young women with basic education delay having sex and are more likely to require partners to use condoms.
  • In one study of 32 countries, women with post-primary education were three times more likely than uneducated women to know that HIV can be transmitted between mother and child.

Stats from the Basic Education Coalition.