HIV/Aids threatens education sector
Tuesday, March 24, 2009 from MONITOR ONLINE
The impact of HIV/Aids on the education sector is damning and if not contained the consequences will be dire, a senior official in the Ministry of Education has warned.
“If the effects of HIV/Aids are not addressed, know that your brothers, your sisters, your children in school are going to be affected,” Mr Yusuf Nsubuga, the director for basic and secondary education, told journalists at the Media Centre yesterday.
Mr Nsubuga was speaking ahead of next week’s launch of the World Vision and USAID-funded Supporting Public Sector Workplace to Expand Action and Response to HIV/Aids (SPEAR) programme. The programme is also to be extended to the ministries of Internal Affairs and Local Government.
The education sector, Mr Nsubuga added, is facing an increase in staff attrition partly due to HIV-related factors. “We are experiencing low morale of the workers because when people get sick and cannot perform as expected, and the morale of both learners and educators is affected.”
While he said no studies have been done to establish the prevalence of HIV among the sector, the abundant stigma and discrimination indicated an underlying problem.
HIV prevalence has declined from 18 per cent in 1992 to 6.4 per cent in 2005.
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