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Archived Comments for: Knowledge and attitude towards HIV/AIDS among Iranian students

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  1. Preventive Education against HIV/AIDS in Iran.

    Mohammad Reza Mohebbi, Tehran University of Medical Sciences

    27 July 2004

    I read with great interest the informative article by Dr. Tavoosi and colleagues entitled “Knowledge and attitude toward AIDS among Iranian students" [1]. I would like to thank them for their endeavour that serves as an initiative to our future approach to preventive education against HIV/AIDS for the Iranian youth. With reference to a sentence in the background that says "…because of unreasonable fears among most Iranian people that AIDS education promotes high risk behaviours, sex education about HIV transmission has no place in schools and universities in Iran…", I should like to mention the following points to further clarify the issue:

    The Ministry of Education has started preventive education against HIV/AIDS in schools in the year 2004 (and this was after the study by Dr. Tavoosi and colleagues was submitted). The results of the country study of preventive education against HIV/AIDS in the schools in Iran were released in December 2003 [2]. Currently, 13000 in-service biology teachers and school physicians are being trained to provide preventive education in the schools. They can educate near 1.5 million students in high schools every year. A special course on HIV/AIDS has been designed as an appendix to biology books for the first grade high school students [2,3]. The program has started now and the course is to be modified based on the feedback in practice. Peer education as an important component of the preventive education will be also considered as a part of the program in high schools.

    To my knowledge, both the government and the non-governmental organisations are working hard on capacity building and management of preventive education against HIV/AIDS in Iran.

    I'm sure that the findings by Dr. Tavoosi and colleagues will be very helpful in our future plans for preventive education.

    References:

    1. Tavoosi A, Zaferani A, Enzevaei A, Tajik P, AhmadinezhadZ: Knowledge and attitude towards HIV/AIDS among Iranian students. BMC Public Health 2004 24; 4:17.

    2. Gheiratmand R, Navipour R, Mohebbi MR, Hosseini KM, Motaghian-Monazzam M, Mallik AK, et al. A Country Study to Review Existing Capacity Building and Management of the Training of Teachers on Preventive Education against HIV/AIDS in the Schools in I.R. Iran. Available from the official website of the Deputy of Physical Education and Health, Ministry of Education of the I.R. Iran: URL: http://www.neshat.org/html_pages/a_country_study_to_review_existi1.htm . Accessed July 28, 2004.

    3. Bureau of Nutrition and School Health, Deputy of Physical Education and Health, Ministry of Education of the I.R. Iran. Policies of the Ministry of Education for Prevention of HIV/AIDS [In Persian]. 2003, Tehran, Iran.

    Competing interests

    No competing interests

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