Reaching youngsters at an impressionable age before they become sexually active can lay the foundation for a responsible lifestyle, including healthy relationships and safe sex habits. NACO reaches out to youth through specially developed Adolescent Education Programme focused primarily on prevention through awareness building.

The Adolescent Education Programme was one of the key policy initiatives of NACP II. Ministry of HRD and NACO collaborated to develop this school-based programme that is implemented across 144,409 secondary and senior secondary schools with the objective of reaching out to about 33 million students within two years. AEP is implemented by the Department of Education in collaboration with the State AIDS Prevention and Control Societies.

The Adolescence Education Programme (AEP) aims at:
• Co-curricular adolescence education in classes IX-XI
• Curricular adolescence education in classes IX-XI and life skills education in classes I- VIII
• Inclusion of HIV prevention education in pre-service and in-service teacher training and teacher education programmes.
• Inclusion of HIV prevention education in the programmes for out-of-school adolescents and young persons, and
• Incorporating measures to prevent stigma and discrimination against learners/students and educators and life skills education into education policy for HIV prevention.

Many individuals and institutions have important contributions to make to promoting healthy development in adolescents and in preventing and responding to health problems in them, if and when they arise. Health-care providers (HCP) have important contributions to make in both these areas. However, situation analyses and needs assessment exercises carried out in different parts of the world point to shortcomings in their professional capabilities and in their “human qualities” as a result of which they are unable and sometimes unwilling to deal with adolescents in an effective and sensitive manner.

This module introduces you to syndromic case management and its advantages over the classic approaches to STI management. Before starting this module, you should already have completed Module 1, so that you are aware of the scale of the STI epidemic and the problems of reducing its transmission.