Irshad Ali Shaikh, Masood Ali Shaikh.
Teachers attitudes about HIV/AIDS prevention education in secondary schools.
J Coll Physicians Surg Pak Jan ;15(9):582.

A cross-sectional survey was conducted among public sector secondary level school teachers in Islamabad and Rawalpindi to understand their views and gain an understanding of their perceptions about AIDS education in the classrooms, from September 14th to November 30th 2004, using a selfadministered structured questionnaire. One hundred and fifty-five teachers (53 males and 102 females) were selected by convenience sampling and requested to complete the questionnaire. The mean age of respondents was 38 years (range 23 – 58 years). Mean duration of working as a teacher was 14.4 years (range 1 – 37 years); and most teachers taught multiple subjects. Regarding the question about the need for students to be taught about AIDS in classrooms; 112 (72.3%) teachers acknowledged this need while 19 (12.3%) did not. One hundred twenty-one (78.1%) teachers believed that teaching about AIDS was joint responsibility of both teachers and parents while 13 (8.4%) believed that it was only parents` responsibility. Totals do not add upto 155 as not all respondents answered all these questions. On the question as to the appropriate class from which such education should be started, 101 (65.2%) teachers felt that AIDS education should be started in either class 8 or above, while 30 (19.4%) believed in the need for starting classes earlier than 8th grade ; the rest were either unsure or did not answer the question. Most (74.8%) teachers believed that in future AIDS will become a major public health problem in the country and that AIDS education early-on in classrooms will be helpful in reducing its spread. However, their ambivalence about AIDS preventive education in classrooms became glaringly obvious when 93 (60%) responded by saying that they thought that teaching about AIDS was irrelevant in our cultural setting.

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