HIV prevention in Africa
A continuing rise in the number of HIV infected people is not inevitable. There is growing evidence that prevention efforts can be effective, and this includes initiatives in some of the most heavily affected countries.
One new study in Zambia has shown success in prevention efforts. The study reported that urban men and women are less sexually active, that fewer had multiple partners and that condoms were used more consistently. This is in line with findings that HIV prevalence has declined significantly among 15-29 year-old urban women (down to 24.1% in 1999 from 28.3% in 1996). Although these rates are still unacceptably high, this drop has prompted a hope that, if Zambia continues this response, it could become the second African country to reverse a devastating epidemic.
This suggests that awareness campaigns and prevention programs are now starting to work. But a major challenge is to sustain and build on such uncertain success.
What form should AIDS education take?
Peer education
A social form of education without classrooms or notebooks, where people are educated outside a 'school' environment but still have the opportunity to ask questions.
Most peer education focuses on providing information about HIV transmission, answering questions and handing out condoms to people in a workplace, perhaps in a bar, or where a group of women gather to wash clothes.
Most peer educators make contact with their target audience at least weekly and their sessions will usually be in the context of informal discussions with individual people or within a group.
Active learning
Active learning can sometimes link into peer education, especially when AIDS education is aimed at young people, as one of the best methods of learning something oneself is to teach it to others.
Blanket education
A general message aimed at the population as a whole. Blanket education usually aims to inform the population about which behaviors are risky and to give them support in changing these behaviors.
Targeted education
This type of strategy is usually used to speak to social groups who are perceived as being at a high risk of HIV infection. It focuses on risky activities particular to the specific target group.
AFRICA ALIVE!
January of 2000 kicked off the campaign to literally help keep Africa Alive! in the new millennium.
The Mission of the Africa Alive! campaign is to give youth the skills they need to fight against HIV/AIDS. The vision is a new generation of Africans who are HIV/AIDS-free.
HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) is a virus that eventually develops into AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) which is a deadly disease that was ravaging and still is ravaging the world at this time. Johnson, taking this into consideration, decided to educate the youth about this problem, “’ I want to educate the public…We have to make people aware of [HIV]” (Johnson 297). Johnson knew that the heart of this problem lie in the uneducated youth, so he thought the first step in the right direction would be to inform them about the situation. After his individual efforts to promote awareness for this cause, he was invited by the president to join the National Commission on AIDS. This was the next big step in spreading education throughout the country.
The HIV epidemic hits nowhere else in the world harder than Sub-Saharan Africa, which accounts for more than two-thirds of the entire world’s cases of HIV. In her book, “The Invisible Cure”, writer Helen Epstein explores the myriad of reasons as to why the HIV outbreak is so alarming as well as differentiated than any other area of the world. Epstein explores how cultural factors influence individual behaviors as well as generations that grow up under these cultural conditions, how political involvement (or lack thereof) can often misinform people, and how structural levels of privilege allows less opportunity for those in poverty to obtain the help that they may need.
What would you say if I asked you to tell me what you think is causing the death of so many people in the horn of Africa? AIDS? Starvation? War? Would it surprise you if I told you that it all boils down to the women of Africa? Kofi Annan attempts to do just this in his essay “In Africa, Aids Has a Woman's Face.” Annan uses his work to tell us that women make up the “economic foundation of rural Africa” and the greatest way for Africa to thrive is through the women of Africa's freedom, power, and knowledge.
The spread of aids threatens our population daily. Lives lost to it number over 12 million, including 2 mil...
Statistics have been show a frightening increase in AIDS/HIV cases. As of the year 2012, South Africa has had the most cases of HIV/AIDS coming to a total of 6,070,800 ("Country Comparison :: HIV/AIDS”). This is a huge contributing factor to this conspira...
It considers the present and future impact of the AIDS epidemic on major demographic measures such as fertility, mortality, life expectancy, gender, age, and family structure. Although the sub-Saharan region accounts for just 10% of the world’s population, 67% (22.5 million) of the 33.4 million people living with HIV/AIDS in 1998 were residents of one of the 34 countries of sub-Saharan Africa, and of all AIDS deaths since the epidemic started, 83% have occurred in sub-Saharan Africa (Gilks, 1999, p. 180). Among children under age 15 living with HIV/AIDS, 90% live in sub-Saharan Africa, as do 95% of all AIDS orphans. In several of the 34 sub-Saharan nations, 1 out of every 4 adults is HIV-positive (UNAIDS, 1998, p. 1). Taxing low-income countries with health care systems inadequate to handle the burden of non-AIDS related illnesses, AIDS has devastated many of the sub-Saharan African economies.
The author mentions a few key take away main points. First of all, solutions must address the underlying causes of HIV risk among women. This mainly includes poverty and disempowerment because women in lower living standar...
During my sophomore year of high school a couple of my peers and I were asked if we wanted to learn about HIV and AIDS and teach our classmates. My answer was a resounding yes. After attending classes several evenings a week and on the weekends for a few months at the florescent
HIV is a battle that has existed for a long time and is still an uphill battle for those affected. This sickness has not only hurt the people but it has grown to affect the economy and politics of numerous countries and regions like America and South Africa. Therefore, the stance on the resilience has grown over the past forty years. It has existed and grown and has come to be one of the biggest social issues in the world. It has become so intertwined with society that it has had lasting affects on all divisions of the world and those divisions are economic divisions, political division, and social divisions within Africa, America, and Asia.
In United States, the HIV epidemic reached its peak in the 1980s when the number of infected reached 130,000 people per year. Infected women ...
To decrease HIV transmission and to minimise the impact of the epidemic, on children, young people and families, through the growing effectiveness of national action to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the East of Asia and the Pacific regions. They aim to provide practical support and aid at community level, encouraging the full engament of people affected by HIV/AIDS.
A country once in denial now has it’s South African political leaders addressing the disease that is slowing killing their population The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) which evolves into acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is affecting South Africa socially as well as economically. This disease is also leaving over a million and a half children orphaned. Most of these children are not only orphaned but living with the virus as well.
Moody, J. (2011). Strengthening prevention program theories strengthening prevention program theories. Society for Prevention Research, 349-360.
Discussion, the active learner participates in peer discussion and any other assignment. This will help problem solving, experimentation, synthesis and other evaluation of contents.
The emergence of HIV/AIDS is viewed globally as one of the most serious health and developmental challenges our society faces today. Being a lentivirus, HIV slowly replicates over time, attacking and wearing down the human immune system subsequently leading to AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) at which point the affected individual is exposed to life threatening illnesses and eventual death. Despite the fact that a few instances of this disease have been accounted for in all parts of the world, a high rate of the aforementioned living with HIV are situated in either low or medium wage procuring nations. The Sub-Saharan region Africa is recognized as the geographic region most afflicted by the pandemic. In previous years, people living with HIV or at risk of getting infected did not have enough access to prevention, care and treatment neither were they properly sensitized about the disease. These days, awareness and accessibility to all the mentioned (preventive methods, care etc.) has risen dramatically due to several global responses to the epidemic. An estimated half of newly infected people are among those under age 25(The Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic). It hits hard as it has no visible symptoms and can go a long time without being diagnosed until one is tested or before it is too late to manage.