Preventing HIV/AIDS among school dropouts

In military-ruled Myanmar poverty forces over half the country’s children to leave primary school early, putting many at greater risk of contracting HIV/AIDS as they are left out of any formal education on how to avoid the virus. An AIDS prevention curriculum is being gradually introduced into primary and secondary schools in the country, but experts say they need to find an effective way to convey similar potentially lifesaving information to the millions of children who cannot remain in school. "There are kids working on many things, including selling odds and ends in the street," said Jason Rush, a spokesperson for UNICEF in Myanmar. "We don't want this huge group of kids to be left out of AIDS prevention efforts. But it's hard to find a way to bring them all together and engage them." The government estimates almost 340,000 people in Myanmar were living with HIV/AIDS at the end of 2003. UNAIDS puts the figure at more than 600,000. The virus is primarily spread through sexual transmission, accounting for two out of three infections. Intravenous drug use accounts for most of the rest, with a small percentage being due to unsafe blood and mother-to-child transmission. Now, with a recent US$870,000 contribution from the German government, UNICEF is able to launch a pilot project aimed at the challenging task of strengthening HIV prevention efforts among school dropouts. UNICEF will use the funds to help three community-based NGOs to build networks of young peer educators who will be trained to work with those at risk. The educators will be tasked with identifying clusters of around a dozen teenage school dropouts in their areas, and training them on HIV/AIDS awareness, along with other so-called life skills, including literacy and reading, intended to reduce their vulnerability to the virus. The peer counsellors are supposed to serve as long-term mentors and role models for the young people that they identify. The idea is to provide long-term emotional and moral support for these young people, who, without education, are at greatest risk of ending up as migrant labourers or being trafficked into the sex industry, raising their chance of being exposed to the deadly virus. "The kids do form a strong bond with the peer counsellors, who are more effective communicators than a foreign guy sitting in an office can ever be," said Rush. The programme began in 2003 and is currently working in 58 communities in 10 townships with particularly high HIV prevalence rates, including deeply impoverished residential areas around the capital, Yangoon, and suburbs of the northern town of Mandalay, which are important transit points for trafficking. With funding from the German government, which will cover the next two years, the programme will be expanded to 81 communities, while next year it will take in a further 20 townships, as UNICEF works to put the project on a nationwide level. Children in school in Myanmar are currently more likely to receive some information about HIV and prevention, though even here there is still a long way before such education is universal. Currently, HIV/AIDS prevention is part of the curriculum in primary and secondary schools in around one-third of the country's regions, and coverage is gradually expanding, Rush said.