Effective HIV/AIDS Education And Prevention
HIV/AIDS is the global issue of new era of science and technology and we should know that the problem of widespread AIDS is challenge for human survival. Children and young people need to be equipped with the knowledge, attitudes, values and skills that will help them face these challenges and assist them in making healthy life-style choices as they grow. Education delivered through schools is one of the ways through which children can be helped to face these challenges and make such choices.
Providing information about HIV (transmission, risk factors, how to avoid infection) is necessary, but not sufficient, to lead to healthy behavioral change. Programs that provide accurate information, to counteract the myths and misinformation, frequently report improvements in knowledge and attitudes, but this is poorly correlated with behavioral change related to risk taking and desirable behavioral outcomes. Education can be effective in the more difficult task of achieving and sustaining behavior change about HIV/AIDS. The schools can either be a place that practices discrimination, prejudice and undue fear or one that demonstrates society’s commitment to equity.School policies need to ensure that every child and adolescent has the right to life education; particularly when that education is necessary for survival and avoidance of HIV infection.
HIV infection is one of the major problems facing school-age children today. They face fear if they are ignorant, discrimination if they or a family member or friend is infected, and suffering and death if they are not able to protect themselves from this preventable disease.
It is estimated that 40 million people, worldwide, are living with HIV or have AIDS, at least a third of these are young people aged 15-24. In 1998 more than 3 million young people worldwide became infected including 590,000 children under 15. More than 8,500 children and young people become infected with HIV each day. In many countries over 50% of all infections are among 15-24 years old, who will likely develop AIDS in a period ranging from several months to more than 10 years.
Studies have shown the enormous impact HIV and AIDS have on the education sector and the quality of education provided, particularly in certain regions of the world such as Sub Saharan Africa. Consequences of the AIDS epidemic include a probable decrease in the demand for education, coupled with absenteeism and an increase in the number of orphans and school drop out, especially among girls. Girls are socially and economically more vulnerable to conditions that force people to accept risk of HIV infection in order to survive. A decrease in education for girls will have serious negative effects on progress made over the past decade toward providing an adequate education for girls and women. Reduced numbers of classes or schools, a shortage of teachers and other personnel, and shrinking resources for educational systems all impair the prospects for education.
Effective HIV/AIDS education and prevention is needed in all schools for all children so that no one is left ignorant. Yet in many places schools are apprehensive about providing sex education or discussions of sexuality because of cultural demands to protect adolescents from sexual experience. Women often lack skills needed to communicate their concerns with their sexual partners and to practice behaviors that reduce their risk of infection, such as condom use, which is often controlled by men.
The school can either be a place that practices discrimination, prejudice and undue fear or one that demonstrates society’s commitment to equity. School policies need to ensure that every child and adolescent has the right to HIV/AIDS education; particularly when that education is necessary for survival and avoidance of HIV infection.
A UNAIDS review (1997) of 53 studies which assessed the effectiveness of programs to prevent HIV infection and related health problems among young people concluded that sex education programs do not lead to earlier or increased sexual activity among young people, in fact the opposite seems to be true. 22 reported that HIV and/or sexual health education either delayed the onset of sexual activity, reduced the number of sexual partners or reduced unplanned pregnancies and STD rates. 27 studies reported that HIV/AIDS and sexual health neither increased nor decreased sexual activity, pregnancy or STD.
The review concluded that school based interventions are an effective way to reduce risk behaviors associated with HIV/AIDS/STD among children and adolescents.
There are three main objectives for this paper to integrate the education effectively with the HIV/AIDS preventions and other health aspects related with it.
These are as follows:
Objectives:
* Health education focusing on HIV/AIDS prevention.
* Raising awareness about HIV/AIDS among educators and learners.
* Stimulate peer support and HIV/AIDS counseling in schools.
The main focus of the paper is to give the importance to the HIV/AIDS precaution with the health education raising the awareness about it among all the students as well as their teachers also and provide the supportive environment for the HIV/AIDS education for all.
What Are Bone Conduction Hearing Aids
The bone conduction hearing aids collect sounds from the outside world, however these hearing aids transmit the signal to an oscillator, rather than playing the sound back to the inner ear. This oscillator vibrates against the skull, the inner ear is able to pick up the vibrations and interpret them as sound.
Conventional hearing aids are much more effective than the bone conduction hearing aids. However bone conduction hearing aids are designed for people that are unable to use the traditional forms of hearing aid. If the ear canal is blocked like in Atresia, then a regular hearing aid is next to useless, a bone conduction hearing aid however is much more useful.
If you have ear infections or eczema then you may be unable to wear conventional hearing aids, and so might need to look at using bone conduction hearing aids. If your ear canal is restricted, or narrower than normal then a bone conduction hearing aid may be required.
Bone conduction aids are perfectly suitable for children, and they are also great for people that suffer from temporary hearing loss.
Less than 1% of hearing aid wearers use bone conduction hearing aids, and so they can be difficult to track down. If you need one be sure to discuss it with your audiologist.
Bone conduction hearing aids are unable to perfectly reproduce sound, the sound is somewhat similar to the telephone.
A bone conduction hearing aid uses a headband to hold everything in place, they are occasionally uncomfortable because for them to be effective the headband must be kept tight.
When these hearing aids were new they were designed to be installed into glasses. At the time it was not common to have your lenses thinned, so it was possible to place a small device into the thick frames of the glasses, so the vibrations will be felt.
The latest bone conduction hearing aids use surgery to implant a device. This works directly onto the bone, and so is less irritating for the user. The device also needs less power to operate, and there is less distortion as a result of this.
If you are suffering from permanent hearing loss as a last resort you may want to try one of these implanted bone conduction hearing aids as a last resort.
