The guidelines from the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion offer the following elements for AIDS education for late elementary/middle school program. Discuss with students the issue of sexual behavior as it relates to STD’s. Explain the risks in relationship to contracting AIDS or some other sexually transmitted diseases. Tell students that the only guaranteed way to remain healthy is to abstain from a sexual relationship until marriage.

HIV/AIDS Virus

• Viruses are living organisms too small to be seen by the unaided eye.
• Viruses can be transmitted from an infected person to an uninfected person through various means.
• Some viruses cause disease among people.
• Persons who are infected with some viruses that cause disease may not have any signs or symptoms.
• AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) is caused by a virus that weakens the ability of infected individuals to fight off disease.
• People who have AIDS often develop a rare type of severe pneumonia, a cancer called Kaposi’s sarcoma, and certain other diseases that healthy people normally do not get.
• About 1 to 1.5 million of the total population of approximately 240 million Americans are currently infected with the AIDS virus and consequently are capable of infecting others.
• According to the South Dakota Department of Health Semi-annual HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report, 15 people ages 5-19 were infected with the AIDS virus in South Dakota as of January 2002.
• People who are infected with the AIDS virus live in every state in the United States and in most other countries.
• Infected people live in cities as well as in suburbs, small towns, and rural areas. Although most infected people are adults, Adolescents can also become infected. Females as well as males are infected. People of every race are infected, including whites, blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans and Asian/Pacific Islanders.
• The AIDS virus can be transmitted by sexual contact with an infected person; by using needles and other injection equipment that an infected person has used; and from an infected mother to her infant before or during birth.
• A small number of doctors, nurses and other medical personnel have been infected when they were directly exposed to infected blood.
• It sometimes takes several years after becoming infected with the AIDS virus before symptoms of the disease appear. Thus, people who are infected with the virus can infect other people—even though the people who transmit infection do not feel or look sick.
• Most infected people who develop symptoms of AIDS only live about 2 years after their symptoms are diagnosed.
• The AIDS virus cannot be caught by touching someone who is infected, by being in the same room with an infected person, or by donating blood.

Teachers should be prepared to field questions from students about HIV and the AIDS virus. Teachers should thoroughly acquaint themselves with the proper medical and physical terminologies necessary to discuss this issue with students of this age level.