A four-day Schools AIDS Education Programme was conducted by the Catholic Health Association of India (CHAI), Hyderabad, in collaboration with the Andhra Pradesh AIDS Control Society (APSACS) from October 28 to 31, 2002. The first batch of training programme, held at four venues, was attended by about 345 teachers and students from 96 schools in the twin cities. Every school selected under the project was required to sent two teachers and two students who would become peer educators in their respective schools after the training. Dr Christopher Nathan is the head of the AIDS Desk at CHAI and he had been working in the field for the last nine years.

According to M A Mateen, coordinator of the project, the Schools AIDS Education Programme would cover 810 schools in nine districts of Andhra Pradesh, viz Hyderabad, Ranga Reddy, Warangal, Nalgonda, West and East Godavari, Krishna, Visakhapatnam and Guntur and would be completed by the middle of December. After Diwali the training programme would be conducted simultaneously in all the nine districts. Training for the second batch would be held for teachers from Hyderabad and Ranga Reddy districts from November 12 to 15, 2002.

The training programme is part of the state government's decision to introduce HIV/AIDS education to class IX and X students in all the schools from November 1, 20021. The AP State AIDS Control Society (APSACS) selected CHAI as one of the nodal NGO agencies for the training programme to facilitate the process of Life Skill education in all the schools.

Giving details of the four-day programme that concluded on Thursday, the coordinator said training was given by CHAI's AIDS Resources team and eminent lecturers from various colleges in the city. The training focused on reproductive health, life skills, adolescent psychology, HIV/AIDS, counselling and training skills with the help of modules. All the participant schools would now conduct awareness sessions and school level activities like essay and elocution competitions, debates and workshops on counselling and CHAI teams would be monitoring these activities.

During the last nine years CHAI had been doing both institutionalized and community- based care and management of people living with HIV. It imparts training in counselling, training in managing opportunistic infections, training in advocacy of HIV infected and affected persons. Its six member-institutions in the state at Warangal, Kurnool, West Godavari, Nalgonda, Vijayawada and Guntur, with HIV testing and counselling centers, are also involved in the AIDS programme. These centres provide patients who tested positive with medical care and support facilities, free of cost.

Asked about the response from the participants, Training Officer Ester Glory said the programme was a tremendous success. The teachers and the students had shown keen interest and took active part in the debates and discussions. Both the girls and boys were found to be very open and comfortable during the discussions. A couple of years ago people were extremely shy and embarrassed to talk about sex and AIDS. There was definitely a discernable change in the attitude of the people towards AIDS, she said.

CHAI is one of the largest non-government organizations in the healthcare sector with about 3080 member institutions, which include big, medium and small hospitals, healthcare centres and diocesan social service societies. The main thrust of CHAI is promotion of community health and continuing medical education with special emphasis on HIV/AIDS and communicable diseases.

According to a statement issued by CHAI, there are about 5 million people infected with HIV in India. A majority of them are in the age group of 15-45 years. In about 80 % of the cases, the virus is transmitted through sexual contact.

Andhra Pradesh ranks second in the incidence of HIV. Data indicates the median age of first sexual experience as 16 years for girls and 19 years for boys with the minimum age being 12 years. Therefore, the adolescent age group was significant for taking appropriate preventive interventions. As a fist step it was felt that the decision-makers and planners needed to be sensitized. An initial programme was organized in March 2002 for the principals, managers and teachers of schools in the twin cities. They discussed the need for sex and value education in schools and discussed its possible implementation in the schools.