Sub-Saharan Africa Essay

Economic crisis is not the only threat to educational progress. Africa also has the highest population of people suffering from such diseases as HIV/AIDS (85% of the total number of HIV infections worldwide), malaria, tuberculosis, and other less known diseases like river blindness and liver fluke. These disease go untreated because there is on average only one trained physician for every 13,000 people (Narayan et al., 2000). The HIV/AIDS epidemic has plagued sub-Saharan children and adults alike. Africa has the highest percentage of people living with HIV/AIDS. Fifteen million children under the age of 18 have been orphaned by HIV worldwide (Samhoff, 2003). Among those orphans, eighty percent of them are in sub-Saharan Africa (UNICEF, 2005).

Health education and awareness can act as a “social vaccine” (Meyer, 2003). HIV prevention education provides warnings to students and messages about safe sex. Curriculum in the areas of family planning (which includes both contraception and abstinence education), proper hygiene, and general education would greatly prevent the spread of HIV (Meyer, 2003). Family planning education provides insight on where to get contraception, how to properly use contraception, and how to reduce the risk of infection. Abstinence education is promoted by Christian areas of sub-Saharan Africa. During the peak of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s, Christianity opposed the use of condoms. In fact, the Global Gag Rule, or the Mexico City Policy, imposed by the Reagan administration prohibited non-governmental organizations from providing family planning assistance like abortions or contraceptives (Population Action International, 2012). Instead of contraception, HIV/AIDS prevention campaigns came in the form of abstinence education, which told Africans not to have sex. In theory, abstinence is the best form of protection, but realistically it fails. Luckily, in 2009, President Obama repealed the Global Gag Rule (Population Action International,