Education 'slowing AIDS' in Africa

The spread of AIDS across sub-Saharan Africa is slowing due to an increase in education, sociologists have claimed.

Traditionally, education has had a negative effect on AIDS in the region as it genuinely results in more leisure time, researchers at Penn State have found.

However, David Baker, professor of education and sociology at the university and lead author of the study, suggested that schooling is now having a positive impact upon the number of infections.

"Before the 1990s, in the impoverished regions of sub-Saharan Africa, even modest amounts of education afforded males higher income, more leisure time, and, for some males, greater access to commercial sex workers," he stated.

"HIV-infected higher-status males then spread the infection to both educated and uneducated women, which moved the disease into the general population.

Now he claims that the study has "shown that when there is sufficient information, and no misinformation, people with education adopt healthy strategies to avoid infections".

The study looked at 11 sub-Saharan countries and has been published in Prospects, a UNESCO journal.

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