Education ministry to partner SFH on HIV/AIDS in schools
The Ministry of Education on Tuesday in Abuja announced her collaboration with Society for Family Health to combat HIV/AIDS in schools.
Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, who was represented by Mrs. Justina Ibe, Director, Education Support Services in the ministry, made the above disclosure
while presenting a report at the official dissemination of report of the Impact evaluation of family life HIV/AIDS education in Abuja said the initiative was borne out of the need to equip the in-school youths to abstain from pre-marital sex.
He further maintained that the dissemination of the draft report was a scientific declaration that used the curricular and co-curricular strategies to communicate sexuality information to adolescents by the educational sector.
According to him, the awaited dissemination exercise has delayed after the exit of the Global Fund Round 9 phase 2 interventions on HIV/AIDS in schools.
He said“to fill the gaps and sustain this good initiative, Famliy Life HIV/AIDS Education (FLHE) embodies the new vision and effort to combat the HIV/AIDS scourge in the education sector.
“The exercise is a holistic effort to move the country forward and create a better HIV free society for young people.
“I implore that as partners we should all contribute our quota for the success of the exercise.’’
He also added that the report would be beneficial to the development of the country as well as free the country from the scourge of the deadly disease called HIV/AIDS.
Managing Director, SFH, Mr. Bright Ekweremadu, said the implementation of Family Life and HIV Education (FLHE) in both the upper secondary and lower secondary schools was paramount to the eradication of the scourge in the country.
Ekweremadu said that the impact of the FLHE on Young Persons was beclouded by the lack of empirical evidence to show the efficiency and effectiveness of this approach at reaching young people within schools.
He said that students and young adolescents between the ages of 12 and 19 years account for 54 million of the population hence the need to educate them on the dangers of the epidemic.
“It is against this background that the Society for Family Health with the Federal Ministry of Education and National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA) collaborate to have a free HIV/AIDS society.
“The Global Fund Round 9 Phase2 HIV grant in Nigeria (January 2013 and June 2015) conducted a quasi-experimental study to evaluate the Impact of the FLHE programme among In-school students in Nigeria.
“The overall objective of the impact evaluation study was to identify proven intervention approaches to promoting sexual and reproductive health of in-school youths for better programming among them,’’ he added.
Augustine Okezie, Abuja
