Getting youth through the Aids crisis

Contents • Seizing every opportunity • Frontline Aids victims: girls in the South 1 The African epicentre • A slow march forward • A condom tree in Burkina Faso • Healers to the rescue 2 Southeast Asia • Slowly getting bolder • Stemming the tide in Thailand 3 The classroom and beyond • Prevention at school: an arduous course • A crash course for Rwandan teachers • Uganda: a jihad against Aids • Reaching street kids on their own turf • The stigma of Aids

© UNESCO/Tellem The industrialized world stands out as an exception on the global Aids map: it has managed to stabilize the rate of new infections and to sharply reduce the number of Aids deaths through new combinations of anti-HIV drugs. But everywhere else, the pandemic is spreading, while the sick are treated poorly if at all. This is notably the case in South and East Asia, and, most dramatically, sub-Saharan Africa where the epidemic rages out of control in several countries. Six million people were infected with HIV in 1998. Four million of them live in sub-Saharan Africa. Of the two and a half million people who died last year of Aids, two million were African (pp. 20-21). There is no vaccine to prevent the disease, and new combinations of drug therapies are too costly for the South. The only available weapon is prevention, which is becoming ever more vital since about half of new HIV infections are in young people. Youth also tend to be more open than adults to learning about safer sexual behaviour. But for preventive education to be effective, it must be a priority for everyone. “We’ve preferred to keep our eyes shut,” states Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS (pp. 18-19). Aids bears a heavy symbolic burden which helps to explain why it is all too often treated as a taboo, especially in sub-Saharan Africa (pp. 22-24). Schools are only just beginning to focus on Aids education (pp. 30-31), which is further complicated by the stigma surrounding people living with the disease (pp. 35-36). Nonetheless, new approaches can bear fruit. The results are seen clearly in Southeast Asia (pp. 27-28), specifically in Thailand with the “100 per cent Condom Campaign” (p. 29), as well as in sub-Saharan Africa by way of films (p. 25), traditional healers (p. 26), Koranic schools (p. 33) and school teachers (p. 32). South America also offers positive signs, as seen with a programme tailored for street children in Mexico (p. 34). Most importantly, stresses Piot, politicians no longer need to be convinced of the value and necessity of prevention.