Teachers burdened by stress and HIV
At least 55% of infected educators are on ARVs
A high number of teachers at public schools are living with HIV, suffering from job-related stress, physically sick and don’t know about government’s HIV strategy in schools.
Most of the teachers are black, unmarried or widowed women who work or live in poverty-stricken rural areas.
This is according to a health study by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) released last night. South Africa has over 400 000 teachers, according to Basic Education Department 2014 statistics.
The HSRC randomly sampled1 380 public schools across the country. Its results showed that at least 58 000 teachers were living with HIV, mostly in the 34 to 44 age group.
KwaZulu-Natal recorded the highest prevalence followed by Mpumalanga and the Eastern Cape, while Western Cape was the least affected. About 55% of the teachers were on ARVs.
Due to their illnesses, 66.6% of teachers took advantage of their sick leave.
About 11.8% of the teachers indicated they had two or more sexual partners, and 37.4% reported using condoms with non-regular partners.
Some 6.3% of the teachers were HIV positive but did not know of their status. The study further showed that while government had put HIV strategies in place at schools, many teachers were not aware of them.
Meanwhile, many other teachers sampled were suffering from emotional and physical illnesses such as hypertension, TB and diabetes.
Work-related stress was indicated by half of the teachers who took part in the study.
Spokeswoman of teacher union Sadtu Nomusa Cembi said teachers were human who too make mistake.
“This problem of HIV infections in teachers shows the reality of the country and the society,” she said. She said the union had its own HIV programmes to help test teachers around the country.
HSRC’s Prof Khangelani Zuma, who was involved in the research, said it was disappointing that eight HIV infections were recorded among teachers daily.
“It is regrettable that these infections were affecting a group of people that were expected to be knowledgeable about things. These are educated people that should know better,” he said.
The Report on the Health of Educators in Public Schools in SA was launched last night at the Durban’s ICC.