52,000 students, teachers HIV positive

Children in green khaki uniforms giggle as they run around a tree outside Kibiri Day and Boarding Primary School. Little do they pay attention to the signpost at the extreme end of the compound, reading- No sex before marriage!

But, the little children may not be aware of the looming danger associated with sex. But the reality is striking and needs special attention. Most of them may already have it at the back of their mind that it is wrong to have sex before marriage.

This signpost is one of those that are pinned in various schools around the country under the Ugandan President's Initiative for AIDS Communication to Youth (PIASCY) to teach HIV/AIDS and sexuality.

But some pupils in several schools around the country, have not heeded to this call to avoid having sex before marriage. Others have under different circumstances; have innocently been infected with HIV/AIDS.

As of today, the 2016 official reports from the education ministry, show that in the secondary sub-sector, an estimate total of 10,210 students and 1,000 teaching and non-teaching staff live with HIV. In primary schools, a total of 38,789 (18,848 male & 19,941 female) learners and 2,000 teachers have HIV/AIDS.

This means that about 51,999 teachers and learners are living with HIV in primary and secondary schools in the country.

Today, UNAIDS reports that the prevalence rate (the percentage of the population that is HIV-positive) is 7.2 percent. The HIV/AIDs scourge has partly affected the country progress in the promotion of education. These effects result into increased drop in access to education, performance, transition rates and in education demand in general.

The HIV scourge which has swept through the country for close to four decades has also left behind several orphans. Some of these orphans' livelihood has been destroyed, with a big portion of them left to relatives who cannot send them to school. But with free education, orphanages and NGOs; a number of them have managed to return to school.

It is estimated that in Uganda there are currently two million orphans, and the Uganda AIDS Commission attributes an estimated 1.7 million orphans to the HIV/AIDS scourge.

But, despite the concerted efforts by education sector to curtail the spread of HIV/AIDS through PIASCY as a behavioural Communication Strategy for adolescent and young people, along other interventions; the epidemic is still affecting the right to and access to education and the attainment of Education for All.

Uganda was known as a success story in the early years of the worldwide pandemic. The government's ‘ABC' strategy helped lower the HIV prevalence rate from 13 percent in the 1990s down to 6.4 percent in 2006. PIASCY was meant to maintain the momentum of Uganda's nationwide prevention strategy.

The Ugandan President's Initiative for AIDS Communication to Youth (PIASCY) requires schools to teach HIV/AIDS and sexuality. Since 2002, students have learned about reproductive health, life skills, and HIV transmission and prevention each year beginning in third grade through high school.

 What went wrong?

The decreased fear and complacency to the disease is a trend across the board in Uganda, but in schools this could result in a misguided generation and more infections.

"Nowadays, girls seems more worried about getting pregnant, than having HIV," says Peter Tusubira, a retired head teacher. "This has just exposed more young people to HIV!

Much as there has been so much effort in the fight against HIV, the country seems to have more youths who are more vulnerable than ever. Youth are having sex when they are younger, unlike in the past. As of today, 25 percent of annual births are to women under the age of 18, causing many to drop out of school.

Uganda's population is young—56% of people are under the age of 19 years old, and 37% of the youth ages 15-24 are HIV-positive, according to the Uganda AIDS Indicator Survey.

Teachers living a dangerous life

A new study produced recently in the Journal of Public Health in Africa 2014, at Makerere University, shows that in all for primary and secondary, 20% of male teachers and 14.4% of female teachers have had transactional sex.

This study, entitled "HIV risk sexual behaviors among teachers in Uganda," also adds that primary school teachers were less likely to have involved in transactional sex compared to secondary school teachers.

The study explains that recent studies reveal that teachers are more likely to engage in high-risk sexual behavior compared to the rest of the adult population.

This study done in the Kampala and Kalangala districts reveals that 45% percent of teachers reported having multiple concurrent sexual partners in the last three months. Of these, 76% acknowledged not having used a condom at their last sexual encounter yet only 9.8% knew their partners' HIV status.

The same study also notes that primary school teachers were more likely to engage in multiple sexual relations than their counterparts in secondary schools. The research was done by Lillian Ayebale, Lynn Atuyambe, William Bazeyo, and Erasmus Otolok Tanga.

Teachers sleeping with students

Other studies by the education ministry have also suggested that multiple sexual partnerships are common among teachers involving learners, fellow teachers, workers, communities and education managers for cash, promotion, and favors relating to transfers among others.

Studies clearly show that some of these teachers have groomed a rotten vice of sleeping with their students. The 2014 national study on ‘Assessing Child Protection Safety and Security Issues for children in Uganda' found out that 24% of the teenage pregnancy, early marriages and defilement are by teachers.

Way out!

The state minister for higher education Dr. John Muyingo says, "There is need for the immediate interventions for the increasing number of learners living with HIV/AIDS in the education sector; that are faced with, psychosocial social problems, poor feeding, stigma and discrimination."

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) reported that school teachers in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) are being and will continue to be particularly badly affected by the AIDS epidemic. To date, the report reads, UNAIDS acknowledges that HIV is having a devastating effect on the already inadequate supply of teachers in African countries.

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), teacher turnover and attrition are becoming increasingly chronic problems in the SSA as a result of HIV-related illness and death.

UNESCO adds that, in SSA alone, the region most affected by the epidemic, 1.6 million additional primary teachers are needed to replace those who have passed on or quit teaching in the previous years.

The study recommends promotion of individual risk perception, condom use and reduction in sexual partners. "There is also need to encourage partners to know each other's status, and teachers to avoid risky situations or carefully negotiate such situations," reads the other recommendation of the study.