Education system threatened by HIV/AIDS

HIV/AIDS is threatening Mozambique's education system by killing teachers and leaving students orphaned, Prime Minister Pascoal Mocumbi has said. About 17 percent of the country's teachers are HIV-positive - 4 percent higher than the national prevalence rate among people aged 15 to 49 - and students are forced to leave school to take care of relatives. Mocumbi was quoted by the Associated Press agency as saying: "Many children in Mozambique have already begun to act as heads of households. They begin to work at a tender age to attend to the needs of their relatives, or to spend all their time supporting them, and so they are obliged to leave school." The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has estimated that Mozambique could have as many as 926,000 AIDS orphans by 2010.