Africa AIDS Education

22.5 million People in Sub Saharan Africa are infected with HIV. 90% of these infected people are unaware of their positive HIV status and therefore, they unknowingly pass it on to several other people in a cumulative way, thereby infecting nearly 10 new HIV negative people every minute. Therefore, no other continents demand the need of conducting AIDS education, as Africa does. Africa AIDS education is the need of the hour.

The best effort for the cause has been taken up by World Education and USAID, in collaboration with other local Africa NGOs. World education has been diligently working in Africa for the last forty years, to combat the spread of the disease through “training of the trainer” tool and Africa AIDS education.

Purposes and functions of Africa AIDS education: The main purpose of African AIDS education, is to familiarize the HIV positive patients and the general public, about the disease in details, so that the HIV positives can check the transmission of the disease from himself to others, and the HIV negatives can protect themselves from getting infected. To meet this aim, the following strategies are observed.

• Train and employ more HIV counselors, so that they can serve and give proper advice to the patients.
• Provide HIV counseling in every locality, and local communities.
• It also provides home based care givers to the local communities. The HIV orphans, the old people, those who are on their death beds, rely on these care givers.
• Thus, the profession of health workers is in demand with the government and NGOs. It is also a good source of employment, as these jobs assure security and enough vacancies.
• Africa AIDS education provides AIDS information indirectly and is based on a two tier hierarchy. It provides rigorous HIV education to the health workers working under the government or NGOs. These health workers pass on their knowledge to the local communities.
• The health workers provide classroom training to the students in secondary schools, high schools and colleges.
• HIV education is also given to sex workers and brothels, so that this group of people may also take some efforts to stop the spread of the disease.
• Women are given special attention, because, passing the disease to the next generation is quite in their hands. Therefore, they are taught about the Dos and Don’ts about the disease, when they deal with their children, or when they are expecting a child.
• Couples are also given free counseling by these health workers, so that they know the importance of safe sex, and loyalty to one partner.
• Educate the general public about the causes of HIV and various routes of its transmission, so that they can check on that by taking proper measures.

The Africa HIV education not only depends on the health care workers, but also on the mass media to a significant extent. Although, the health care workers still play the most important and prominent role in AIDS Education in Africa, mass media too has a noticeable contribution in spreading HIV awareness and mobilizing a large population to fight against the disease. The use of creative ads, campaigns, traditional media, street plays, radio, newspapers and television has stood together to propagate catchy and creative public welfare campaigns to fight HIV.