COMMUNITIES
HIV/AIDS Prevention Education
To address the challenge of HIV prevention, UNESCO and UNAIDS have launched EDUCAIDS– The Global Initiative on HIV/AIDS Prevention Education.
EDUCAIDS
As a sponsor of UNAIDS – a joint venture of the United Nations family to fight HIV/AIDS, UNESCO concentrates its efforts on prevention education. It has spearheaded the launch of EDUCAIDS, to enhance national HIV/AIDS prevention and mitigation by helping governments implement comprehensive, nation-wide education programs, especially for young people.
The Challenge
HIV/AIDS epidemic continues to be a catastrophe. According to EDUCAIDS, in 2003, 3 million died from the epidemic, 14 million children have been orphaned and more than 40 million infected. There is still no cure or vaccine. Yet the epidemic can be prevented. With 5 million new infections in each of the last three years we are confronted with a massive failure of prevention.
Strategy
- Advocacy: All UNESCO institutions are mobilized to serve as media channels for renewed efforts in preventive education, in order to muster support and focus energy and resources on preventive education.
- Customizing the message: The message to deliver depends on many social factors, such as age, gender, educational opportunities, economic conditions, religious beliefs. UNESCO develops effective and culturally sensitive messages towards target groups.
- Changing risk behavior: UNESCO is involved in the development of curricula sensitive to gender and culture. To curb the epidemic, those not infected must know how it spreads and act on this knowledge, and those infected must learn to become protective of others.
- Caring for the infected: Because the right to health care is far from fulfilled and medical treatment is not truly available in a non-discriminatory manner to all, UNESCO's key task is to battle complacency, advance commitment and improve care.
- Coping with the impact: With infection rates reaching a third of the population – and as many as half of the young in some countries – no institution will remain untouched. Governance itself may be threatened and could become destabilized by the enormous loss of personnel and capacity.
In sharing best practices UNESCO develops and disseminates tools for monitoring and assessing the impact of the epidemic on students, schools, teachers, educational and other related institutions.
Partners of EDUCAIDS
Principal partners of EDUCAIDS are ministries, UNESCO National Commissions, the UNESCO NGO network (including leading youth NGOs, civil society groups and networks), professional associations in its fields of expertise, research institutions, teachers and teacher-training institutions. Through such cooperation EDUCAID broadens its network and field of influence to better prevent the spread of the HIV virus.