Geography Background

1. HIV/AIDS in South Africa Jared Sanders Canyon View High School Introduction • Prevention of HIV/AIDS in South Africa • Education – important in helping provide vital life skills. Life skills education has long been “advocated as a key component of HIV and AIDS education for children and young people” (Yankay & Aggleton, 2008). • Stigmas – long entrenched in South African society concerning sexual issues. HIV stigmas in South Africa “can lead to discrimination, rejection, and abuse that increases the social consequences of HIV that can cause additional stress to those infected and affected” (Chiu et al, 2008). • Behavior Change – most important form of prevention because people can change behaviors. Knowing someone who has HIV has led youth to report to the seriousness of HIV and the odds of them changing their behavior increased (Palekar et al, 2008). • Impact of • HIV/AIDS on • South Africa’s Population • When teaching about HIV/AIDS in South Africa, students will: • Understand the circumstances that exist that make some areas of the world more vulnerable to an epidemic, such as South Africa has been with HIV/AIDS • Realize factors that contribute to the spreading of a disease like HIV/AIDS in South Africa • Look at certain trends within medical geography as to how disease is spread and what the role is of the rest of the world to help a country like South Africa • Empathize with the human impact and the societal implications of HIV/AIDS in South Africa • Mortality Rates • in South Africa • 1997 - 2004 HIV/AIDS in South Africa is a tragic case study that can help explain how an epidemic takes hold of a region. The prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS in South Africa is high, with approximately 5,700,000 people being infected. When teaching this topic to high school students, it is important to help them realize what type of circumstances exist in a county like South Africa that can lead to such an outbreak. After studying a topic like HIV/AIDS in South Africa, students will be able to better empathize with the desperate situation in South Africa and they will become familiar with one of the pressing issues in the world today. In My Classroom Geography Background • South Africa has many different factors that contribute to the high prevalence of HIV/AIDS in South Africa: • Poverty – half of South Africa’s 46.9 million people are poor, limiting their access to important services such as quality health care and education (Mubangizi, 2008). • Health Care – system in South Africa is currently overburdened by the needs of its citizens, suffering from a “triple burden of health --- infectious diseases, non-communicable diseases, and injury and violence” (Mooney & McIntyre, 2008). • Education – not affordable to many people. With education so crucial in helping educate adolescents about ways to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS, the primary reason for not completing high school in South Africa remains the issue of affordability (Pettifor et al, 2008). • Location – settlements in South Africa similar to those set up by apartheid government, with Africans, Coloureds, and Indians living in townships, the poor and run-down areas. South Africa’s rural areas are still areas “where people may often have limited or no access to health and welfare services and will carry a significant weight of the sub-continents overall HIV burden” (Campbell et al, 2008). • Politics – recent administration led by President Thabo Mbeki was very slow to recognize the seriousness of the HIV/AIDS threat for South Africa. In all, it is estimated that 171,000 infections and 343,000 deaths could have been prevented if effective programs had been implemented in a timely manner (Natttrass, 2008). • High-Risk Behavior – factor that citizens have most control over. Correct and consistent use of condoms is one of the few interventions known to prevent new HIV infections (Witness et al, 2008). • Treatment of HIV/AIDS in South Africa • Antiretroviral Therapy (ARV) – reduce mortality of those infected with HIV after early diagnosis. In 2004, South Africa launched a nationwide ARV program, and now has more people taking ARV medications than any other country in the world (Mooney & McIntyre, 2008). • Mother – Child Transmission – a definite need for early treatment of mother and child. Increase in mortality rates for infants at 2-3 months are due largely to immunological vulnerability of the HIV infected (Bourne et al, 2009). • GIS for HIV/AIDS Management – Geographic Information Systems (GIS) used to estimate travel time to clinics, quantifying physical accessibility and providing comparisons for varying urban landscapes (Vanmeulebrouk et al, 2008). Conclusions South Africa is a tragic case study the shows how a disease like HIV/AIDS can have such a devastating impact on a country. Although the prevalence of HIV/AIDS has somewhat stabilized, 29% of the population is still infected. The government was slow to react in a responsibility way to the massive outbreak of HIV/AIDS, which has not helped the high prevalence rates. Also, the economic gap between rich and poor has negatively influenced proper treatment and preventative measures. The role of this discussion in the classroom should be centered on factors that have lead to this massive outbreak, and what options there are to deal with the high prevalence of HIV/AIDS. If such discussions can start in a ninth-grade geography class and impact those involved, then perhaps there is hope for the future outlook of HIV/AIDS in South Africa and helping to reduce the numbers of those infected. Bibliography Bourne, D., Thompson, M., Brody, L., Cotton, M., Draper, B., Laubscher, R., Abdullah, M., Myers, J., et al. (2009). Emergence of a peak in early infant mortality due to HIV/AIDS in South Africa. Official Journal of the International Aids Society, 23(1), 101-106. Campbell, C., Nair, Y., Maimane, S., & Sibiya, Z. (2008). Supporting people with AIDS and their carers in rural South Africa: Possibilities and challenges. Health and Place, 14, 507-518. Chiu, J., Grobbelaar, J., Sikkema, K., Vandormoel, A., Bomela, N., & Kershaw, T. (2008), HIV-related stigma and social capital in South Africa. AIDS Education and Prevention, 20(6), 519-530. Mooney, G., & McIntyre, D. (2008). South Africa: a 21st century apartheid in health and health care? The Medical Journal of Australia, 189(11/12), 637-640. Mubangizi, B.C. (2008). Responses to poverty in post-apartheid South Africa: some reflections. International Journal of Social Welfare, 17, 174-181. Nattrass, N. (2008). AIDS and the scientific governance of medicine in post-apartheid South Africa. Journal of African Affairs, 107(427), 157-176. Palekar, R., Pettifor, A., & Behets, F. (2008). Association between knowing someone who died of AIDS and behavior change among South African youth. Journal of AIDS Behavior, 12, 903-912. Pettifor, A., Levandowski, B., MacPhail, C., Padian, N., Cohen, M., & Rees, H. (2008). Keep them in school: the importance of education as a protective factor against HIV infection among young South African women. International Journal of Epidemiology, 37, 1266-1273. Vanmeulebrouk, B., Rivett, U., Ricketts, A., & Loudon, M. (2008). Open source GIS for HIV/AIDS management. International Journal of Health Geographics, 7(53), 1-16. Witness, M., Levandowski, B., MacPhail, C., Rees, H., & Pettifor, A. (2008). Consistent condom use in South African youth’s most recent sexual relationships. Journal of AIDS Behavior, 12, 431-440. Yankay, E., & Aggleton, P. (2008). Effects and effectiveness of life skills education for HIV prevention in young people. AIDS Education and Prevention, 20(6), 465-485.