Ms. Elizabeth Moundo, Director of the United
Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Accra,
on Friday said there was the need for countries to conduct
research on the education sector's response to HIV/AIDS to enable them
to deal with the menace effectively.
She noted that there had been an increasing demand to provide planners
and managers with requisite skills to address the impact of HIV/AIDS on the education sector because statistics showed that young people in the education sector accounted for about 45 per cent of new HIV infections worldwide.
Ms. Moundo was speaking in Accra at a training workshop on HIV and AIDS
for 35 educators selected from Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, The Gambia, Sierra
Leone, and Liberia.
The workshop was on the theme: "Educational Planning and Management
in a World with AIDS" and participants were taken through topics such as
stigma and discrimination, Teacher and HIV/AIDS education
and understanding a country-specific problem related
to HIV/AIDS education.
Ms. Moundo pointed out that there were existing techniques to be adapted
and new tools developed to prepare personnel to better manage and mitigate the impact of the HIV pandemic.
"We need to identify and provide care and support for those infected and affected by the pandemic in the education sector whether they are positive teachers, orphans and vulnerable children or displaced people from in-and post-conflict countries in the education sector."
Ms Moundo advised participants that the teaching profession touched the brain and mind of the child and urged them not to be teachers for teaching sake but to go further to explain to their students the need to understand problems affecting the society such as HIV
and AIDS.
Dr. Joseph Annan, Deputy Minister for Higher Education at the Ministry
of Education, advised the participants to implement recommendations that they
had agreed to work on.
"As you go back to your countries, it is my hope that the recommendations of this meeting will be brought to the fore to inform policy-makers and
other stakeholders in our quest to address the HIV/AIDS menace in the sub-region."
Mr Annan expressed the belief that participants
had been better resourced to develop strategies to mitigate the impact of the pandemic as it related to specific responses in individual countries.
In Ghana the National Association of Teachers launched a publication in February on the topic: "A Study of the Education Sector's Response to HIV and
AIDS in Ghana."
The findings of this important study provided the baselines for applying the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on HIV and AIDS.
Ms. Francoise Caillods, a facilitator from the International Institute for Educational Planning, said a lot remained to be done, pointing to stigmatization
as a problem but added that there were also aid opportunities available for those working in the HIV/AIDS sector.