Mixed media: Abstinence under fire

Support by America and others for tackling Aids with an ABC approach - abstain, be faithful or use condoms - has provoked fury at an international conference.

FAILED POLICY

AMERICAN EXPERT: The bulk of the Bush money has been going to prevention messages that are essentially pushing abstinence. Women I spoke with in Uganda who are HIV-positive and are trying to get access to treatment are married women, women who technically followed the ABCs. They were abstinent until they were married, and once they were married, of course, they didn't use condoms, because the goal for many couples is to start families and have children. They became HIV-positive because their husbands were HIV-positive.
- Anne-Christine d'Adesky, a journalist on Aids issues quoted on Motherjones.com

AUSTRALIAN PRESS: Michael Wooldridge, former federal health minister, who is now chairman of the Ministerial Advisory Committee to the Australian Government on Aids, Sexual Health and Hepatitis, said it was unfortunate that debate on the worldwide HIV epidemic, which has killed more than 20 million people and infected 38 million, had been hijacked by the issue of abstinence when "no one has been able to find a way of making it work in practice".
- Sydney Morning Herald

WASHINGTON VIEW: The need to go beyond "ABC" grows out of the stark statistics. Sixty per cent of those living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa are women and girls. Girls between 15 and 19 are infected at rates as much as five times higher than boys their age. This is linked to social and economic factors that severely undermine women's control over their sexual lives. In a climate where sexual abuse and exploitation of women and girls are widespread and usually unreported, how can they practise abstinence?
- Washington Post

RADIO REPORT: Former Ugandan health official Dr Richard Otto says abstinence alone is not effective in fighting HIV/Aids. Dr Otto credits the use of condoms, not abstinence, for most of the success in Uganda's anti-Aids campaign. He takes issue with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's remarks at the International Aids conference in Bangkok that abstinence is the most effective way of fighting the Aids pandemic.
- Report on Voice of America

BACKING RESTRAINT

ARAB VOICE: What it seems the HIV/Aids professionals really want to focus their resources on are drugs to slow the onset of the disease once contracted. While clearly anything to relieve the consequences of the condition is welcome, the American strategy actually attacks the disaster at its very roots. It is clear that despite the contribution of rape to the problem, HIV/Aids is being spread largely by voluntary sexual incontinence. By now most people anywhere in the world should have got the message about the dangers of HIV/Aids. If it is still being passed on, it is being done by people who have decided to ignore the risk.
- Arab News, Saudi Arabia

AMERICAN BLOGGER: Uganda is the only nation on the huge continent to experience a decrease in the percentage of new cases. There are numerous reasons for this. One is the awful mortality rate of those with Aids in Uganda. So many have died in some areas that entire villages are virtually "manless". Another is the seriousness with which Ugandan officials are demanding the propagation of abstinence until marriage. The linkage between the evangelical revival and the decrease of sexual activity among young people is as obvious as the suffering of the diseased adult generation.
- Pastor Jones on WorldMagazine Blog

AFRICAN ANGLE: "The A and B of ABC is a guarantee that takes you off the risk of getting Aids," said Onaba, an abstinence social marketing specialist at Makerere Community Church in Kampala. "It is possible for young people to say no to sex, to feel empowered," said the young Onaba. But if the discussions here are any indicator, then Onaba's voice - calling for youth to abstain from sex till marriage - is a lonely one.
- AllAfrica.com

WEB COMMENT: As of 2002, Uganda was the only sub-Saharan African nation with a rising life expectancy, and certainly the only one that could be fairly assessed to have turned the corner on Aids. The abstinence rhetoric is hardly "wasted"; and furthermore, since the $15 billion President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief plan explicitly endorses an "ABC" plan modelled upon Uganda's success, you can't really gripe about the President failing to give proper emphasis to condoms.
- Posted by Tacitus on Body and Soul blog