HIV prevention

For decades, curriculum-based sexuality education has been a cornerstone of school- and community-based efforts to improve young people’s sexual and reproductive health, and more recently to prevent HIV infection. Unfortunately, public discourse about sex education has been mired in polarizing debates that distract attention from determining how sex and HIV education programs might best achieve the shared goals of many different constituencies.This research brief answers some key questions relating to HIV education with young people. 

 Prevention is a word that draws considerable controversy among AIDS experts. Billions of dollars have been poured into treatment programs and vaccine research, but prevention strategies - things like condoms, education, and clean needle exchanges - rarely receive comparable attention. Prevention does not require vast research capabilities. Its success is not dependent on feats of technical ingenuity such as refrigeration in remote, off-grid villages. But in Africa, prevention has nonetheless baffled the medical establishment. Meanwhile, the most recent in a long string of research disappointments have caused scientists to forecast a long wait for a vaccine breakthrough. In its absence, it is increasingly apparent that prevention will have to be at the forefront of any HIV/AIDS response.

The Minister of Education Naledi Pandor and 23 public higher education institutions have adopted a policy which will guide schools and tertiary institutions to improve their current HIV and AIDS prevention programmes.

Young people in South Africa face the highest rate of HIV infection.

The Policy Framework on HIV and AIDS for Higher Education Institution in South Africa, adopted at an event in Johannesburg on Thursday, recognises that institutions must act to prevent new HIV infections and provide access to treatment, care and support for staff and students infected or affected by the pandemic.

Adopting the policy, Minister Pandor said South Africa was a country with one of the highest HIV and AIDS rates, and therefore there was a need to support those infected and affected by the disease.

Young people in higher education institutions are facing peer pressure, alcohol and drug abuse, said the minister, adding that she was hoping to see chancellors taking a leading role in the implementation of the framework.

"We can do no less if we were to save young people to this serious threat, I'm looking forward to the concrete plans to the framework which will see the reduction of the epidemic," she said.

The broad argument made in global and local discourse about microbicides centers around the concept of "female control" over HIV prevention via virginal inserted microbicides. This argument positions women as subordinate to men in sexual choice-making and in decision making about HIV prevention during sex- particularly a lack of control over choosing to use a male condom.

Whilst the argument of gender power imbalances maybe supported through research, it does not allow that the factor inherent in female disempowerment over sexual choice-making and HIV prevention are readily addressed by microbicides technology.