Global Campaign for Education

Education For All and HIV/AIDS Prevention in Schools

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).  For more information, to go www.ei-ie.org/efaids/en/index.htm.

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.

Return to main Global Campaign for Education page