Comment: Losing our educators

Losing our educators

By John Kiwanuka Ssemakula, 30 May 2002

The alarming loss of teachers has caught the attention of African governments and aid agencies. This is not the first time such headlines have hit the news, but people have been slow to react.

For too long policy planners have stubbornly stuck to the prevailing notion that HIV/AIDS is mainly a health problem. This has been a tragic oversight, as the deaths of the teachers show, and even more is a damning indictment of the unpreparedness of many sectors outside of the health system for dealing with the consequences of the AIDS epidemic.

Health education, “Education as a vaccine” is after all one of the lynchpins of any preventive campaign, and teachers should be the ones preaching the gospel to their students. Sadly, teachers do not seem to have heard the message themselves.

This prevailing attitude even extends to educators in the hallowed corridors of the ivory towers, universities and institutions of higher education. A report “Challenging the Challenger” (Kelly, 2000) found a startling lack and awareness of AIDS and its impact at universities in Africa.

According to a World Bank report “Education & HIV/AIDS: A Window of Hope”, nations need to strengthen and improve their education systems…because education offers communities and individuals an escape from HIV/AIDS.

A sub regional forum held by UNESCO’s Education For All (EFA) in April 2002, highlighted the statistics. In Kenya, teacher deaths due to HIV/AIDS rose from 450 in 1995 to 1400 in 1999. In Tanzania, the World Bank estimates that by 2010 over 14,000 teachers will die from AIDS. The figures are stark and scary.

So what is to be done? Clearly HIV/AIDS education needs to be mainstreamed into all activities, both for the educators and teachers as well as students. HIV/AIDS education needs to be introduced into schools in spite of cultural taboos if there is to be a chance to protect the younger generation.

Equally importantly, there needs to be a substantial increase in the number of teachers being produced today. There needs to be some sort of accelerated or fast tracked project that will significantly enhance the output of teachers.

This requires more not only more assistance from donor countries, but also the cooperation and commitment of African governments to the education sector. Teachers need to be given support not just in training, but also improvements in the terms and conditions they operate in. Without this any efforts will ultimately be doomed to failure.

In the absence of affordable treatment (including anti-retrovirals) or a working vaccine against the HIV virus, Education is the only widely available preventive means we have at our disposal. Thailand and Uganda have shown it is possible. It is time the rest of Africa followed suit.