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African Development Forum 2000 AIDS: The Greatest Leadership Challenge |
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Home > Documents > The Leadership Challenge and the Way Forward : HIV/AIDS and Education in Eastern and Southern Africa CONTENTS > NEXT PAGEForewordA young person at the age of eighteen or nineteen is a person filled with vitality, life and dreams for the future. The difficult growing up years of childhood and adolescence have passed. Those years may have seen some turmoil and even physical setbacks, but these are now a thing of the past. The world is at the young person's feet, waiting to be conquered, waiting to be made one's own. If HIV/AIDS were articulate, would it express similar sentiments? In the eighteen to nineteen years of its devastation among humans, it still appears to be full of lethal vitality. It has experienced its setbacks-the success of the antiretrovirals, better knowledge about its dynamics, the possibility of controlling mother-to-child transmission, some slowing down of transmission in Thailand, Senegal and Uganda, more intravenous drug-users using clean needles-but it still rolls on, taxing humanity's knowledge and understanding, reversing development, absorbing resources, weakening social systems, causing untold suffering and grief to millions of children, women and men. This Report examines one aspect of the seemingly inexorable advance of HIV/AIDS: the way it has impacted on the education sector in Eastern and Southern Africa. The Report also examines the adjustments the sector has made to the epidemic and the steps it has taken to slow down its transmission. The overall impression is one of disarray, inadequate understanding, and piecemeal response-several projects, but few programmes. The great tragedy of the almost random way education is adjusting to the demands of the HIV/AIDS crisis is that in the present state of human knowledge and science every prevention effort and many impact-management approaches depend on education. There can be no prevention of HIV transmission without the maintenance of behaviour that will protect oneself and others, or the change of existing behaviour so that it becomes protective of self and others. The only way of ensuring this is through education, regardless of the circumstances, of the age of the individual, of the nature of the intervention. To maintain existing `safe' behaviour or to adopt safe behavioural practices, some form of education is necessary. Given this education, the other supports provided by society can be brought into play. In its absence, they remain useless. For instance,
In this sense, education is a crucial, and currently essential, element in society's armoury against HIV transmission. It is a necessary, though not sufficient, component in all prevention activities. But as this Report brings out, education is not living up to the demands that the HIV/AIDS crisis imposes. The Report brings forward a number of reasons why this is so. Cardinal will be the need for leadership. Ironically, HIV/AIDS poses a twofold challenge for educational leadership. It undermines the very systems that should produce the needed leaders and all the support personnel and human capacity on which their effectiveness must rely. But at the same time, it calls for creative, dynamic, visionary leadership that will inspire action which will place education systems squarely in the forefront of the combat against HIV/AIDS. In considering "AIDS: The greatest leadership challenge", the African Development Forum 2000 will advance understanding of how education systems can be protected so that they play their crucial role in preventing HIV transmission. It will also show how leadership can be Mobilized in this, and in all other areas, for halting the advance of HIV, reducing its incidence, and managing its impact. This Report contributes to the African Development Forum's dialogue by examining the challenges posed by the HIV/AIDS epidemic to leadership in education. In doing so, it is doing much, since this is an area that has not yet been extensively investigated. But this is not enough. Challenges can overwhelm. Leaders, from high level political leaders right down to school heads and CBO personnel, need something more. They need guidance on the way forward. This the Report tries to supply by mapping out the elements of an effective strategy for confronting the epidemic within the education sector. It is the hope of the Team responsible for this document that the message of the Report will be taken on board by political, civic, religious and community leaders and that they will take urgent and appropriate action to Mobilize all their educational resources to win control in the battle with HIV/AIDS. The situation is too grave for any further delays. "The time for action is now, and right now" (Nelson Mandela, Durban, July 2000). The Report Team, October 2000 |
| 3-7 December 2000, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia | ||
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© 2000 Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) For questions regarding this web site contact the webmaster Last updated: December 29, 2000 11:31. |
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