Family Planning Association of India (FPAI)
Shampa is a schoolteacher at a private school in Mohali. While most of the other staff at her school do not like to talk about HIV/AIDS, she knows that the young people to whom she teaches science need to know more about HIV/AIDS and how they can protect themselves.
But when the topic of integrating HIV/AIDS education into the school curriculum comes up at staff meetings, most staff say things like, ‘this will take away time from teaching important subject matter’. “Yet what subject could be more important for young people than HIV/AIDS?” says Shampa.
With an estimated four million of its billion people infected with HIV, India has the largest number of HIVinfected people in the South and South East Asia region.
According to UNAIDS, HIV is firmly embedded in India’s general population and is now rapidly spreading into rural areas previously thought to be relatively untouched by the epidemic. Each year the country adds an alarming 500,000 new infections among young people.
Studies and field experience provide evidence of the early onset of sexual activity and low levels of HIV/AIDS awareness among young people.
Condom use is limited due to ignorance of the role they play in preventing sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and HIV.
Although in principle both the government and technical authorities have developed a preventative health education programme, in practice this is not being implemented at state level. In response, the Family Planning Association of India (FPAI) implemented the project, ‘Advocacy for creating an enabling environment for implementing adolescent education with special emphasis on STI/HIV/AIDS prevention.’
The aim was to advocate to politicians, government officials of education and health departments at the Block and District levels, teachers, opinion-leaders, concerned NGOs and parent groups about the urgent need for educating adolescents on sexual and reproductive health issues including sexually transmitted infections (STI) and HIV prevention.