Education: an antidote for the spread of HIV/AIDS.

There are growing fears about the rate at which AIDS is spreading across the globe today, particularly in Africa. In 20 years, AIDS has become the greatest pandemic ever, and indications are that it will continue to increase. Because there is no universally accepted curative drug for the treatment of the epidemic, this report describes an attempt at providing education as a preventive method for the spread of the deadly disease. It is also an attempt to rise to this challenge by a systematic analysis of appropriate theories that can lead to insight into the epidemic. An empirical approach will further add to scholarly understanding and much-desired solutions. Suggestions are offered on how to achieve these goals through integration of HIV/AIDS education into school curricula, and how nursing practice can help in the education about and treatment of the disease. This report is the first part of a two-phased study from a sociologic point of view of an emergent universal health problem.

Poverty alleviation in Nigeria: lessons from socioeconomic thoughts of the Yoruba.

Nigeria is the 13th largest oil producer in the world. Yet about 56 per cent of the total population lives in absolute poverty. This article confronts conventional theories of poverty with the indigenous thoughts of the Yoruba (one of the three major ethnic groups in Nigeria). Darwinian, individualistic, cultural, situational and structural theories of poverty associate it either with individual-case or economy-wide factors. Approaching anti-poverty strategy through individual-related factors (such as training the unskilled poor) without due consideration to the economy-wide factors (such as job creation for the poor) ends up redistributing rather than actually reducing aggregate poverty. The analysis of poverty-related proverbs of the Yoruba reveals a consistency between the conventional theories and what the Yoruba think about poverty. The Yoruba believe in chronic (osi) versus transitory (ise) poverty, associated with suffering. They believe that poor people can escape the poverty trap through their own personal efforts (such as by developing a positive work attitude, working hard and reducing their family size) along with the help of support systems (such as job creation and food security). The Yoruba believe that job creation is the best anti-poverty strategy. They further believe that by removing hunger, poverty becomes insignificant. Based on these two axioms, this article suggests that attention be paid to job creation and food security for the poor. It also recommends that studies of the socioeconomic thought of the other major Nigerian tribes with respect to poverty be undertaken, so as to arrive at nationally and culturally derived anti-poverty strategies in Nigeria.