The influence of education in reducing the HIV epidemic

Abstract

We use an SIRE (susceptible, infected, removed, and education) model to study and evaluate the effectiveness of Uganda’s education campaigns from the last 25 years in reducing the prevalence of AIDS and HIV infection. We divide the susceptible class into four subgroups with different infection rates due to their differing beliefs on sexual conduct. We use data from Uganda about the epidemic and educational influences to help estimate the infection rates, and then we simulate the model and compare our results to real data from 1996–2007.