Aids is Damaging Education System - Mocumbi 09-02-2004   Mozambican Prime Minister Pascoal Mocumbi on Monday declared that it is urgent to develop new information and prevention strategies, to halt the spread of the AIDS epidemic among the youth of the country.

Mozambican Prime Minister Pascoal Mocumbi on Monday declared that it is urgent to develop new information and prevention strategies, to halt the spread of the AIDS epidemic among the youth of the country.

Speaking at the opening of a seminar on education and AIDS, Mocumbi said that both the government and civil society are well aware that the main way in which the HIV virus that causes AIDS is transmitted is through unprotected sexual relations.

Mocumbi warned that, just as it affects the human body, so HIV/AIDS is damaging the country's education system - with each passing day, more teachers are failing to show up at their classes because they have fallen prey to AIDS-related illnesses. Children are missing school because they are looking after parents or other relatives who are dying of AIDS.

"Thus many children in Mozambique have already begun to act as heads of households", said Mocumbi. "They begin to work at a tender age, in order to attend to the needs of their relatives, or to spend all their time supporting them. And so they are obliged to leave school".

In order to reduce the impact of AIDS, and protect the education system from the epidemic, it was crucial to educate young people about how the disease can be avoided, the Prime Minister stressed. Ignorance was the main reason why AIDS continued to spread.

"Education for prevention should bring as its result the adoption of responsible behaviour and attitudes towards sexuality, and which will help halt the contamination of young people by the virus", Mocumbi said.

He warned "If we are not capable through education to ensure that young people know how to avoid the disease, then all other efforts we make will be meaningless".

Mocumbi informed the meeting that preliminary estimates show that about 17 per cent of the country's teachers are HIV-positive (considerably higher than the national average of 13 per cent HIV prevalence among people aged between 15 and 49).

This will lead to the death of 1.6 per cent per year of the country's teachers.

Mocumbi said AIDS will impose profound changes on the education system, since sickness and death will cut a swathe through teachers and managers, who cost a great deal to train.

Schools, he added, must also prepare to cope with large numbers of children who have lost one or both their parents to AIDS, as well as children who are infected with the virus, and who need special care against the opportunist diseases associated with HIV.

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