EDUCATION: UNAIDS boss calls for pro-youth partnership

The Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), Peter Piot, called on Wednesday for a partnership with the education sector to save the lives of millions of young people threatened by AIDS.

Joint effort is also needed to rescue Africa's attempts to achieve universal education, UNAIDS reported Piot as saying at the World Education Forum, which began on Wednesday in Dakar and ends on Friday.

"AIDS constitutes one of the biggest crises and the biggest threats to the global education agenda that we have known," Piot said. It "undermines the gains of decades of investment in human resources, education, health and the well-being of nations."

On average AIDS killed five teachers each week between 1996 and 1998 in Cote d'Ivoire alone. "Now seven out of 10 teachers die due to AIDS in the country," UNAIDS said. Between 1996 and 1998, as many teachers died of AIDS as retired in Central African Republic. AIDS killed some 1,300 teachers in Zambia in the first 10 months of 1998 - more than double the 1997 teacher
death toll and equivalent to about two-thirds of all teachers trained annually in Zambia, UNAIDS said.

Piot called for greater involvement of the education sector to help "roll back the HIV/AIDS" epidemic.

An estimated 34 million people worldwide are living with HIV, 24 million in Africa alone. Some 15,000 new HIV infections occur daily.

[See also http://www2.unesco.org/wef/en-news/coverage_relea.shtm]