Why do we need HIV/AIDS education?
Each year there are more and more new HIV infections, which shows that people either aren’t learning the message about the dangers of HIV, or are unable or unwilling to act on it. Many people are dangerously ignorant about the virus – a survey found recently that a third of teens thought there was a ‘cure’ for AIDS. Education is an important component of preventing the spread of HIV. Even if education were completely successful, it would still have to be an ongoing process – each generation a new generation of people become adult and need to know how to protect themselves from infection. The older generations, who have hopefully already been educated, may need the message reinforced, and need to be kept informed, so that they are able to protect themselves and inform the younger. There are three main reasons for AIDS education, the first of which is to prevent new infections from taking place. This can be seen as consisting of two processes: Giving people information about HIV – what H
