Health and Infectious Diseases
Among health concerns, infectious diseases are having a devastating impact on school systems worldwide. For the past few decades, new diseases have been emerging at the unprecedented rate of one per year, and other known diseases are likely to evolve to drug-resistant strains. HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria present the most important challenges in terms of morbidity, treatment costs and equitable vaccine access. These three diseases are responsible for about 6 million deaths worldwide each year, mostly in transition and developing countries. The situation is particularly critical in sub-Saharan Africa, which accounts for 63% of the global HIV-infeeted population, 89% of malaria-related deaths and twelve of the fifteen countries with the highest tuberculosis incidence rates worldwide. Women increasingly carry the burden of HIV/AIDS, either through infection or as caretakers.HIV prevalence and AIDS-related deaths are expected to rise in some of the worlds most populous countries leading to increasing or stagnant mortality rates.
Meeting basic health concerns, including nutrition and immunization, is also critical for reaching school enrolment and attendance targets and for effective learning among children in school. Nutrition policies have helped reduce hunger worldwide since 1990, but 800 million people in developing countries remain malnourished as the result of disease or inadequate dietary intake.Several international partnerships have advanced efforts towards universal vaccination coverage, but this has yet to be achieved for all major immunizable diseases. The presence of a sick household member, combined with social and economic inequalities, can affect a childs ability to attend school in multiple ways. For example, HIV/AIDS has been devastating for households as well as the agricultural labour force, as both affected individuals and non-affected family members often stop working. A family can no longer afford the cost for a child to attend school or to forgo the opportunity cost of child labour.Moreover, poor households are at risk of entering the "medical poverty trap" whereby they cannot afford to treat their ailments or they borrow beyond their means to cover health care expenses. Orphans often face many disadvantages,such as the loss of inheritable property and the lack of adult supervision, and a great higher risk than non-orphans of discrimination, social exclusion, dropping out of school and poor access to basic health care.