Pop Quiz: What’s one of the most effective ways to turn the tide on the African AIDS epidemic?

A. Fund public health and family planning initiatives.

B. Develop better curriculums promoting abstinence and monogamy.

C. Provide better medical care, lowering mother-to-infant pass-along rates.

D. Send African girls to high school.

Ding ding ding! If you guessed D, you just might be on to something. (Although “all of the above” works, too.)

If you’re a product of the eighties like me, you might subconsciously view HIV as a man’s disease. AIDS is something emaciated, middle-aged men die from–at least in cheesy after-school docudramas.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, however, nothing could be further from the truth. According to UNICEF, the majority of African AIDS victims are women in their twenties and thirties–young mothers who are leaving children behind.

In Africa, a child is orphaned by AIDS every 15 seconds. Not okay.

What’s more, these young women are twice as likely to have HIV than men in the same age range.

Is it just me, or does that seem odd? I mean, how does the math work on that?

Here’s how it happens.

In Africa, impoverished adolescent girls are often partnered off with older men, for the sake of economic stability. These older men have typically had several sexual partners already, and live in a culture that doesn’t necessarily value monogamy. Even if the girl has some say in the relationship, condoms are generally not used, and the girls’ immature bodies make them more likely to contract HIV than they would be if they were older.

In other words, girls aren’t typically getting HIV from having sex with their boyfriend, or even from sexual assault (although those are serious, systemic problems as well). They’re getting HIV from sexual relationships born out of economic necessity. Remove the economic necessity, and the rates of infection drop drastically.

African girls who finish elementary school are only half as likely to contract HIV as their less-educated peers. And get this: 15-19 year old girls who are enrolled in school are five times less likely to have HIV than their out of school peers.

Did you catch that? FIVE TIMES less likely.

That’s kind of a big deal.

Unfortunately, only 17% of girls in Sub-Saharan Africa attend secondary school, according to the most recent statistics I am aware of. But imagine what could happen if every African girl had a chance to attend school during her teen years.

The AIDS epidemic would go into full-scale retreat.

Maternal and child mortality rates would drop dramatically.

And a generation of healthy, well-equipped women would be raising cherished children, instead of dying slow deaths and leaving their babies to the mercy of an over-stressed orphan care system.

Could we make that happen?

You betcha.

Sponsor a teenage girl through Compassion or World Vision, giving her the gift of a great education.

Give a girl a micro-finance loan through Kiva, so she can start a business and cover her school fees herself.

Or just make sure the poor kid has underwear and maxi pads, so she doesn’t have to miss school while she’s having her period.

The possibilities are endless–just like these girls’ potential.

What about you? What are your favorite ways of fighting back against the HIV epidemic?