Education and HIV/AIDS-30 years on

Abstract

Education has long been identified as having a key role to play in reducing HIV-related risk and vulnerability, and in mitigating the impact of the epidemic on affected individuals and communities. This article reflects on progress over a 30-year period with respect to older and more emergent forms of education concerning HIV and AIDS: treatment education, education for HIV prevention, and education to encourage a positive and supportive community response. It points to a number of priorities for the future. These include analyzing more carefully different forms of HIV-related education, their consequences and effects, and identifying the specific effectivity of education in general and HIV-related education in particular in achieving positive outcomes. The potential of education to enable new ways of seeing, understanding, and hoping is stressed, as is the need to support education processes and systems that "think" faster than the epidemic.