Report on the Global HIV/AIDS epidemic

Waking up to devastation
The toll on teaching...
Education is an essential building block in a country's development. In areas where HIV
infection is common, HIV-related illness is taking its toll on education in a number of
ways. First, it is eroding the supply of teachers and thus increasing class sizes, which is
likely to dent the quality of education. Secondly, it is eating into family budgets, reducing
the money available for school fees and increasing the pressure on children to drop out
of school and marry or enter the workforce. Thirdly, it is adding to the pool of children
who are growing up without the support of their parents, which may affect their ability to
stay in school.
Skilled teachers are a precious commodity in all countries, but in some parts of the
world, they are becoming too sick to work or dying of HIV-related illness long before
retirement. The Central African Republic, where around one in every seven adults is
estimated to be infected with HIV, already has a third fewer primary school teachers
than it needs. A recent study of the impact of HIV on the educational sector showed
that almost as many teachers died as retired between 1996 and 1998. Of those who
died, some 85% were HIV-positive, and they died an average of 10 years before
reaching the minimum retirement age of 52. The study recorded that 107 schools had
closed owing to staff shortages, and only 66 remained open. With the teacher shortage expected to worsen, researchers calculate that over 71 000 children aged 6-11
will be deprived of a primary education by the year 2005. A similarly dramatic impact
has been found in Cote d'lvoire, where teachers with HIV miss up to six months of
classes before dying (compared with 10 days missed by teachers dying of other
causes) and where confirmed cases of HIV/AIDS account for 7 out of 10 deaths
among teachers.
In Zambia, deaths among teachers are very high and still rising rapidly. In the first 10
months of 1998, Zambia lost 1300 teachers - the equivalent of around two-thirds of all
new teachers trained annually. AIDS may aggravate the existing disparity in educational
access between town and countryside. In a national survey of 6-15-year-olds in 1996,
over 70% of those living in cities were enrolled in school, compared with just over half of
those in rural areas. Rural postings are already unpopular among teachers in many countries, and the Zambian study suggested that the need to be close to a source of health
care - a town or city - acted as an extra disincentive to teachers to go to rural areas.... the toll on learning
It is commonly assumed that children drop out of school when their parents die,
whether of AIDS or another cause. While there has been little rigorous research, a
few studies can point to AIDS in the family as a direct cause of school drop-out. For
example, in a study of commercial farms in Zimbabwe, where most farmworker
deaths are attributed to AIDS, 48% of the orphans of primary-school age who were
interviewed had dropped out of school, usually at the time of their parent's illness or
death, and not one orphan of secondary-school age was still in school.

/f74
3// f/

w r

4
/7
l '
/7",

/

/
r.3 1/

29

/j