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Limpret Moyo and Loveness Mpofu, Sunday News Reporters
NGWALONGWALO Primary School has once again outshined other primary schools in Bulawayo after winning the Primary Schools HIV and Aids Quiz competition held in the city on Thursday.
The competition is a National Aids Council initiative in collaboration with the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education aimed at imparting schoolchildren with life skills on HIV and Aids-related issues.
The school, located in Pumula, also won the same accolade last year and represented Bulawayo at national level.
For coming up first, the school got $500. Mtshingwe primary was the first runner up followed by Mabhukudwana.
Other schools that took part in the competition are Malindela, Manondwane, Lotshe, Khumalo, Mgoqo, ZRP Ross Camp and Senzangakhona.
Speaking during the event, Bulawayo acting Provincial Education Director Mrs Olicah Kaira said the competition was in line with the new education curriculum whose drive is to equip learners with skills, knowledge, values, attitudes and dispositions to help them at school and outside.
She said Zimbabwe, like other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, has remained saddled with a heavy burden of HIV and Aids that continues to erode education in other developmental achievements of the nation.
“I am informed that one in every four children in Zimbabwe is vulnerable to HIV and Aids. It is also said the children who lose parents due to Aids-related illnesses have 90 percent chances of getting infected with HIV.
“The orphans are vulnerable to all sorts of abuse including sexual abuse, emotional abuse and physical abuse which in turn affect their education. It is therefore our duty as a nation to work together in fighting HIV and Aids,” said Mrs Kaira.
She said such competitions were a learner centred educational strategy which is highly commendable. She also encouraged schools to participate in the pre-event activities so that learners are exposed to information on HIV and Aids.
The 2017 HIV and Aids Quiz competitions ran under the theme “Closing the tap of new HIV infections”.
derick.khumalo