Posted on 08/29/2005 12:08:03 PM PDT by edcoil
By Andrew Quinn
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The U.S. government's emphasis on abstinence-only programs to prevent AIDS is hobbling Africa's battle against the pandemic by downplaying the role of condoms, a senior U.N. official said on Monday.
Stephen Lewis, the U.N. secretary general's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, said fundamentalist Christian ideology was driving Washington's AIDS assistance program known as PEPFAR with disastrous results, including condom shortages in Uganda.
The Bush administration favors prevention programs that focus on abstinence rather than condom use and has more than doubled funding for U.S. abstinence-only programmes over the past five years.
As part of President George W. Bush's global AIDS plan, the U.S. government has already budgeted about $8 million this year for abstinence-only projects in Uganda, human rights groups say.
"There is no question in my mind that the condom crisis in Uganda is being driven and exacerbated by PEPFAR and by the extreme policies that the administration in the U.S. is now pursuing in the emphasis on abstinence," Lewis told journalists on a teleconference.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Damn right, it's my fault Africa is a cesspool.
Sheeze.
INSERT KOFI ANNAN COMMERCIAL FOR TROJANS HERE
Sorry, how many people got AIDS through abstinence?
You mean people can choose? They don't have to have promiscuous sex and use condoms, they can abstain?
I don't get to read the "funnies" since I don't subscribe to the local liberal rags. Real life seems to fill the gap just fine.
Hey, Steve! What's the failure rate for condoms?
I will never understand why the USA gets involved in other country's health issues... or any other overseas issues, other than national security.
Lewis is the former leader of the Socialist New Democratic Party of Ontario some years back ....
Fortunately for me, the UN took him off our hands a few years ago. Now if we can only bring the conservatives back.
UN officials are worried that if the US keeps pushing abstinence, it will hurt the sex clubs in the countries the UN officals are stationed to monitor.
So what's the problem?
(Making the U.N. look bad?)
Wouldn't this more correctly read: The U.N.'s emphasis on condom-only programs to prevent AIDS is hobbling Africa's battle against the pandemic by downplaying the role of abstinence.
NEWSFLASH: Those are US run programs, not UN programs.
The UN is more concerned about keeping others our of their cookie jar than helping the African people.
The UN has been "helping" Africa for decades. Things really don't appear to be improving.
Maybe the UN should quit criticizing the US when we have a better track record.
"said fundamentalist Christian ideology was driving Washington's AIDS assistance program known as PEPFAR with disastrous results, including condom shortages in Uganda."
Seems to me that that makes condoms pretty popular, if there's such a shortage. Hard to see how the abstinence program is causing it...if anything its not working.
Maybe Canada would like to step up their condom donation and stfu.
To learn more about the so-called African "AIDS" epidemic check this essay by Peter Duesberg: "THE AFRICAN AIDS EPIDEMIC: NEW AND CONTAGIOUS - OR - OLD UNDER A NEW NAME?
http://www.duesberg.com/subject/africa2.html
Statistics show that when the UN goes into an African country with condoms and sex education, the AIDS rate goes up. In contrast, the Phillipines, which in the early days looked just as bad as Africa, has very little AIDS now, because they chose to take the abstinence route.
The problem with peddling abstinence is that it's hard to make money off it. Unlike the UN way, there is not much graft, less need for bureaucratic staffing, no fewer underage girls being passed around to play with.
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