A STUDY ON THE HIV/AIDS EDUCATION PROGRAM IN SCHOOLS IN CHENNAI

Background: HIV/AIDS was the biggest health and social crisis of the 20th century. Many preventive protocols were developed to control and reduce the infection; the chief among them was to create awareness on HIV/AIDS, among those who practiced highrisk behavior and those who were most vulnerable. Young people were found to be vulnerable as they were disproportionately affected by the virus. Hence, the International Alliance for the Prevention of AIDS (IAPA) began to spread awareness among school and college students, through its Summer Volunteer Program (SVP). For the past 11 years, the program has been going on and the organization wanted to study the efficacy of the same. Methods and Materials: The study was conducted, adopting a descriptive design among private school students studying in the standards from IX to XII standards and primary data were collected through structured questionnaire, using quota sampling methodology. The data was analyzed to find the efficacy of the school education program and learn lessons to further improve the program. Results and Conclusions: It was seen that the program greatly increased the knowledge levels of HIV/AIDS among the students, belonging to the five schools, who underwent the program, on HIV/AIDS, especially in the question areas of HIV transmission, prevention, testing, progression of HIV and care of the people living with HIV. While there was a universal increase in knowledge across all areas, in some question areas, such as dealing with blood to blood transmission, the number of years a person with HIV will live, without medication the knowledge between pre and post questionnaires remained same, emphasizing the need to revise the methodology and concentrate on some areas.