HIV/AIDS education goes into JSS curriculum

Wa, Aug. 21, GNA - About 330 junior secondary school teachers in the Wa Municipality are undergoing a three-day workshop at Wa to equip them with the requisite knowledge to integrate HIV/AIDS issues into their schools' curricular.

The workshop, which is under the "HIV/AIDS - Alert School" programme, has been organized by the Ghana Education Service with support from the Ghana AIDS Commission.

Opening it on Monday, Mr Cletus Paaga, Upper West Regional Director of Education advised the teachers not to fix HIV/AIDS on their Classroom time tables but rather incorporate it into their teaching programmes in a practical and consistent manner to ensure behavioural change among their pupils.

He said children between the age of five and 14 were in a special category that should be taught to protect themselves from the disease and remain in that way for their entire lives.

He noted the current national HIV prevalence rate of 2.9 per cent, was a remarkable achievement but the role of the teacher was paramount, if the country was to witness a sustained drastic reduction in the prevalence of the disease.

Mrs. Scholastica Gyiele, the Municipal Director of Education said children usually believed in whatever their teachers told them than in their parents and therefore, advised them to capitalize on that to ensure that the HIV/AIDS education programme succeeded in the schools. Mr Emmanuel Begeluzeb, Regional Vice-Chairman of the network of People Living With HIV/AIDS noted that stigmatisation was the major cause of the slow progress being made in the fight against the pandemic. His chilling narrative of how he got infected with the virus instantly provoked voluntary donations of a total of 364,000 cedis by the participants to support his upkeep.