AIDS and Its Consequences for Families, Health Care and Education in Arusha and Kilimanjaro, Tanzania

Summary

Knut-Inge Klepp, Gro T. Lie, L. Wycliffe Lugoe and Eliringia T. Ngomuo, ‘AIDS an Its Consequences for Families, Health Care and Education in Arusha and Kilimanjaro, Tanzania’, Forum for Development Studies, No. 1, 1993, pp. 63–73.

Drawing on our experience from the Tanzanian-Norwegian AIDS Project currently being implemented in the Arusha and Kilimanjaro regions, we focus on some of the consequences the HIV/AIDS epidemic seems to have for families, the health care system and the educational sector in local communities. The AIDS epidemic brings with it a new kind of stress that is causing psycho-social and economic burdens for an increasing numbers of families. For families, overcoming the stigma attached to AIDS, coping with the extra economic burden when family providers contract AIDS and caring for the increasing number of orphans are three of the main challenges created by the current HIV/AIDS epidemic. Similarly, the growing epidemic is posing new challenges to an already overburdened health care system and to primary public education. While, to a large extent, Tanzania has the personnel necessary to provide AIDS-related care and HIV preventive services, the economic situation has made it extremely difficult to provide these, and the epidemic is currently a major threat to the future health and development of local communities.