HIV and AIDS Treatment Education: A Critical Component of Efforts to Ensure Universal Access to Prevention, Treatment and Care

Preface
"HIV and AIDS Treatment Education: A Critical Component of Efforts to Ensure Universal Access to Prevention, Treatment and Care explores some of the main issues contained within the definition of treatment education, signalling ways that the education sector can play a role along with others engaged in efforts to achieve universal access to prevention, treatment, and care. The paper considers some key strategies, including how to effectively engage and prepare communities and how to involve key constituencies and in particular people with HIV and those on treatment. The paper elaborates on the link between prevention and treatment, re-examines the harmful effects of stigma and discrimination and explores how these factors impede progress in prevention and expanding treatment access. In addition, the paper suggests some possible future directions, underscoring areas of particular priority, which include the need for dissemination of effective approaches to treatment education, the development of practical guidelines and materials that can be used by programme implementers to support the integration of treatment education within ongoing HIV and AIDS education efforts, and ongoing close communication with authorities and organizations responsible for expanding treatment access to ensure coherent and well-coordinated programming.

The paper was developed for the UNAIDS Inter-Agency Task Team (IATT) on Education, for initial presentation at a meeting in Cape Town, South Africa 17 to 19 January 2005. The IATT is convened by UNESCO and includes as members the UNAIDS Co-sponsoring agencies, bi-lateral agencies, private donors, and civil society. The IATT aims to accelerate and improve the education sector response to HIV and AIDS. It has as specific objectives to promote and support good practices in the education sector in relation to HIV and AIDS and to encourage alignment and harmonisation within and across agencies to support global and country-level actions. The IATT seeks to achieve these objectives by: strengthening the evidence base and disseminating findings to inform decision-making and strategy development, encouraging information and materials exchange, and working jointly to bridge the education and AIDS communities and ensure a stronger education sector response to HIV and AIDS.