To Cut HIV Risk in Botswana, Get Teens to 10th Grade

"It might not be some fancy new program to help us fight prevalence of HIV," says Jacob Bor. "It might just be expanding access to something that we already know how to do, which is secondary education." First Baptist Nashville/CC BY 2.0

Time spent in school after ninth grade substantially cuts the risk of people—especially girls—in Botswana getting HIV, experts reported.

For a new study, published in the Lancet Global Health, researchers examined countrywide educational changes that reformed the secondary school grade structure to expand access to 10th grade and beyond.

In a country with one of the world’s highest HIV infection rates (about 25.5 percent), each additional year of secondary school led to a reduction in the risk of HIV infection of 8.1 percentage points. Among girls, the drop was even higher, 11.6 percentage points.

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