HIV/AIDS is a threat to education - Director

Wa, Sept. 30, GNA - The Upper West Regional Director of Education, Mr. Cletus Paaga, says HIV/AIDS is a major threat to education hence the need for education authorities to incorporate the HIV/AIDS into the school curriculum.

"Schools are at times closed down due to HIV/AIDS infection on pupils, students, teachers and even parents or the community", he said. He appealed to teachers to introduce HIV/AIDS topics into every subject that they teach to keep their students abreast with safety methods to reduce the incidence of the virus.

Mr. Paaga was addressing teachers at an HIV/AIDS Alert School Model workshop in Wa on Thursday to sensitise them to achieve and sustain positive behaviour development and change to reduce the spread of the virus among teachers, school children and the school community. The HIV/AIDS Alert School Model is a framework of the Ghana Education Service (GES) to harmonise all HIV/AIDS interventions at the basic Senior High School levels in the country.

Mr. Paaga told the teachers that the implementation of the Alert Model was aimed to create the opportunity for very school to raise its level of HIV/AIDS interventions to a state of alertness to enable the GES to respond to its responsibilities in Education Strategic Plan. "If we teachers sit down unconcerned and in the nearest future there are no school children to teach, no teachers to teach the school children, no community or parents to produce the children, what will happen?" he asked. "This will mean that no manpower or workforce to produce, no government, no Ghana and that may even be the end of the world because all the human beings might have died of HIV/AIDS infection", he said. Mr. Paaga appealed to the teachers to take the lessons learnt at the workshop seriously and implement them when they go back to their schools.