Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - November 4, 2001
Prega Govender

The figures are based on claims submitted to the SA Democratic Teachers Union's funeral scheme between June 2000 and May this year. At an average age of just 39, 1 011 teachers died in the 12-month period. The union represents more than 216 000 teachers.

The study was published in the latest issue of the union's newspaper, the Educators' Voice. It reveals that although most deaths were recorded as "natural" because doctors are legally prevented from listing Aids as a cause of death, most of the teachers had died of opportunistic infections like tuberculosis, pneumonia, gastroenteritis, meningitis and cryptococcal meningitis, which are Aids-related.

The figures have been accepted as authentic by the national Education Department. Asmal's adviser and coordinator of HIV/Aids programmes, Kgobati Magome, said this week that the deaths were "not something that we as a department can run away from".

"Clearly I have looked at it [the figures] and, from the way they [the union] analysed the data, it does show that the bulk of them have died from opportunistic infections.

"I have no reason to dispute [the union's] data."

Magome said the issue of whether a four-year degree for teachers was practical in view of how HIV/Aids was affecting educators was discussed at a teacher education conference recently.

She said the Education Department was launching a programme at the end of this month that focused on a supportive environment for teachers living with HIV/Aids and a life skills programme, which would help teachers learn skills to negotiate tricky situations.

Last month, in a small rural community in the Northern Province alone, four teachers died of Aids-related illnesses.

In the union's first study, over a 10-month period between August 1999 and May last year, 701 teacher deaths were recorded, with 320 of the victims aged between 30 and 39. But a shock finding of the latest study by the union's media officer, Hassen Lorgat, was that teachers with an average age of 34 were dying in KwaZulu-Natal and that, in five of the nine provinces, more women than men were dying at primary school level.

The report said the inability of women to insist on the use of condoms contributed to their higher rate of infection.

Lorgat, who carried out both studies, said he had sent 50kg of nutritional formula to teachers living with HIV/Aids in northern KwaZulu-Natal this week.

"The teaching profession is in a crisis because teachers are dying young. It's important that we get teachers to break the silence on HIV," he said.

Cosatu and Sadtu president Willie Madisha said the Aids issue should be declared a national emergency.

"We realised through our research that very young teachers are dying. Our government is spending lots of money to subsidise universities and tertiary institutions, but even before these young students can share their skills, they die."

Madisha said teachers who were HIV-positive had appealed to him for assistance. "We are making arrangements to go to Kader Asmal and the entire government. Unless we do something, our population will be decimated," he said.

Mlu Ntombela, a regional secretary of Sadtu in KwaZulu-Natal, said 20 teachers - 19 female and one male - had declared their HIV status to him in the past four months alone. Ntombela, who will be attending the funeral this weekend of a teacher who died of an Aids-related illness, said that a teacher had died of an Aids-related illness in almost every school in his region.

Magome said Asmal had declared HIV/Aids a priority and that it was an issue close to his heart.

She said the department's new workplace plan had a strong life skills focus to help teachers prevent and manage HIV/Aids.

"The programme's two main objectives are to ensure that those who are negative remain negative and those who are infected are supported and that living with HIV/Aids is not a death sentence. If you remove the stress of secrecy around HIV and live openly about it, you can get the support of your colleagues."

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