Accelerating The Education Sector Response To Hiv

The education sector plays a key external role in preventing and reducing the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS. It also plays an important internal role in providing access to care, treatment, and support for teachers and education staff, a group that in many countries represents more than 60 percent of the public sector workforce. The education sector can also have a critically important positive effect on the future: Even in the worst-affected countries, most schoolchildren are not infected. For these children, there is a chance to live lives free from AIDS if they can be educated on the knowledge and values that can protect them as they grow up. The authors of 'Accelerating the Education Sector Response to HIV' explore the experiences of education sectors across Sub-Saharan Africa as they scale up their responses to HIV/AIDS within the Accelerate Initiative Working Group, established in 2002 by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) Inter-Agency Task Team on Education. This book demonstrates that leadership by the ministries of education and commitment from key development partners are crucial for mobilizing activities and that full participation of all stakeholders is required for effective implementation. This book summarizes the experiences of technical Focal Points from the 37 ministries of education in Sub-Saharan Africa, which are represented on the sub-regional networks for HIV and Education. These experiences prove that the education sector response can play a crucially important role in the multisectoral national responses to this epidemic.

The education sector plays a key “external� role in preventing and reducing the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS. It also plays an important “internal� role in providing access to care, treatment, and support for teachers and education staff, a group that in many countries represents more than 60 percent of the public sector workforce. The education sector can also have a critically important positive effect on the future: Even in the worst-affected countries, most schoolchildren are not infected. For these children, there is a chance to live lives free from AIDS if they can be educated on the knowledge and values that can protect them as they grow up. The authors of 'Accelerating the Education Sector Response to HIV' explore the experiences of education sectors across Sub-Saharan Africa as they scale up their responses to HIV/AIDS within the Accelerate Initiative Working Group, established in 2002 by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) Inter-Agency Task Team on Education. This book demonstrates that leadership by the ministries of education and commitment from key development partners are crucial for mobilizing activities and that full participation of all stakeholders is required for effective implementation. This book summarizes the experiences of technical Focal Points from the 37 ministries of education in Sub-Saharan Africa, which are represented on the sub-regional networks for HIV and Education. These experiences prove that the education sector response can play a crucially important role in the multisectoral national responses to this epidemic.

The Caribbean Region is second only to Africa in the impact of HIV and AIDS. The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) has responded to this challenge by promoting a multisectoral response to the epidemic. UNESCO has provided regional leadership in strengthening the education sector component of this response. In 2005, UNESCO launched, with CARICOM and the World Bank, a regioinal dialogue involving representatives of Ministries of Education, national HIV and AIDS coordinating councils, development partners, and regional institutions providing leadership in the HIV response, which led to the development and endorsement of a regional Proposal for Action: Accelerating the Education Sector Response to HIV and AIDS in the Caribbean Region. In June 2006, Ministers of Education and representatives of National AIDS AUthorities met in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, under the auspices of the CARICOM Council on Human and Social Development, and agreed to promote education sector leadership in addressing HIV and AIDS and to create a supportive policy and financial environment at national and regional levels. This report describes the development of these regional processes and how they have led to a stronger education sector response at the regional level. It also focuses on developments in three countries (Guyana, Jamaica, and St. Lucia) as examples of how this regional effort translates into action at the national level.

This book examines HIV/AIDS vulnerabilities, impacts and responses in the socioeconomic and cultural context of Sub-Saharan Africa. With contributions from social scientists and public health experts, the volume identifies gender inequality and poverty as the main causes of the HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa.

A Sourcebook of HIV/AIDS Prevention Programs, Volume 2: Education Sector-Wide Approaches is part of a global effort to accelerate the sector's response to HIV/AIDS, particularly in Africa, and reflects the increasing recognition of the role that education has to play in the national response to HIV. A good education is now recognized as making a crucial contribution to reducing stigma and discrimination and to helping young people avoid infection. School-age children have the lowest prevalence of infection, and even in the worst-affected countries, the vast majority of schoolchildren remain uninfected. For these children there is a window of hope, a chance of a life free from HIV if they can acquire the knowledge, skills and values to help protect themselves as they grow up. Providing young people with the "social vaccine" of education offers them a real chance of a productive life. Sector-wide school-based programs have the potential to interact with large numbers of children and youth and offer a ready-made infrastructure for offering cost-effective HIV/AIDS education at population scale. This new volume was produced in response to requests from educators for programmatic examples of education sector-wide approaches. With lessons that are replicable and scalable, this new analysis of 10 HIV/AIDS prevention programs - from 6 Sub-Saharan African countries as well as the Dominican Republic and Israel - fills an important gap in programming expertise in the education sector.

"Examines the relationship HIV/AIDS has with education in different international contexts, from Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, the USA, UK, and the Caribbean"-- Provided by publisher.