Germ Theory

What is the best way to avoid catching diseases caused by bacteria and viruses? Obviously, it would be to avoid exposure to the bacteria and viruses.

This is simple enough for us to understand. But how does one explain this to people who, for all sorts of reasons, have never been exposed to the germ theory of disease?

This is a challenge facing those who would teach AIDS prevention in parts of Africa where the idea of communicable disease through sexual relations is unknown. This is undoubtedly a problem in many other parts of the world, but given how widespread AIDS is in Africa, it is particularly troublesome there.

Geoffrey Clarfield spent more than 25 years working in Africa and the Middle East in policy, education, culture and institutional capacity building. I recently saw a video in which he was commenting on a question that was posed to him by a young worker in the field: How does one teach basic health and prevention programs when the intended audience does not believe in the germ theory of disease? And in the case of AIDS, things get complicated when someone asks, “Why should having sex with a beautiful woman (or a handsome man) kill me? We’ve been doing this for gazillions of years; otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

Clarfield adds that the ideal ages at which work can be done to change attitudes regarding sex is between the ages of five and 15. But non-governmental organisations are forced to accept projects aimed at university students or mine workers, for example, because that’s all the governments are interested in funding.

In the video, Clarfield doesn’t specify why governments would do this. But I wonder if it may have something to do with the queasiness often felt when the topic of sex education comes up. Not that long ago, “abstinence only” sex education was being promoted by far right and not-so-far right governments, despite mounting evidence that such education doesn’t work. For purely ideological reasons, important opportunities at home were lost. Could the same thing be happening internationally?