HIV and AIDS information to adolescents in Maltese secondary schools

Abstract

HIV and AIDS are major public health threats since until nowadays no effective cure has been discovered. Hence, health professionals are highly concerned with providing the public with prevention skills through education. This study investigated the HIV and AIDS concepts given to Maltese adolescents in Secondary schools. This research attempted to find out if the Personal and Social Development (PSD) educators' level of training influenced their teaching framework. Moreover, this study researched these teachers' attitudes towards seminars on HIV and AIDS. In this study, interviews with 15 PSD teachers in different Maltese secondary schools were carried out and completed with a 100% response. Findings suggested that these educators studied, nurture a positive attitude towards the teaching of topics on HIV and AIDS and related seminars. It also emerged that the PSD educators were willing to cover a number of apposite topics on the subject. However, effective teaching was limited due to time constraints and an inadequate provision of resources. The latter, highly coinciding with some studies carried out in the past. This study identifies a need for the provision of ongoing in-service training for PSD educators, a more appropriate time allocation for HIV and AIDS lessons, and the availability of teaching resources.