Posted on 12/17/2016 4:14:20 AM PST by Beautiful_Gracious_Skies
Washington spent more than $1 billion telling people in 14 African countries not to have sex before they get married. It didn’t work
Over the past 15 years the U.S. has spent $1.4 billion promoting abstinence before marriage as a way of preventing HIV in 14 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Unfortunately, according to the most comprehensive, independent study conducted to date of the effort, the money was pretty much wasted.
A rigorous comparison of national data from countries that received abstinence funding under the 2003 U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) with those that had not showed no difference in the age of first sexual experience, number of sexual partners or teenage pregnancies—all aspects of behaviors that have been linked to a higher risk of becoming infected with HIV.
Instead, the study showed, the single most important factor associated with lower levels of risky behavior was the number of years women remained in school.
Other efforts that have proved effective in slowing the spread of HIV include treating the infection in pregnant women so they do not pass the virus on to their newborns.
So why did PEPFAR spend so much money on abstinence programs? That was Congress’s idea. Responding to pressure from religious conservatives, the legislature mandated in 2003 that at least a third of PEPFAR’s prevention budget be spent on telling people to refrain from sex before marriage. That specific requirement was dropped in the 2008 bill that reauthorized the program and PEPFAR has spent progressively less money on abstinence education over the intervening years.
Still, the study’s authors point out, PEPFAR allocated $45 million to abstinence education in 2013. “There is a big opportunity cost there,” Lo says. “It’s not necessarily a benign expenditure.”...
Although the latest findings about PEPFAR’s prevention efforts are disappointing—if not infuriating—its treatment programs have been entirely more successful. A previous study by Bendavid in 2009 and another in 2012 showed that the government initiative has saved at least a million lives by making anti-HIV medications more widely available for those who need them.
This is considered by many to be George W. Bush's greatest legacy.
Without being Christ-centered, it would be useless. There would be no answer to the question, “why not?”
Billy Graham and Samaritans Purse and Convoy of Hope likely were more successful.
Mosquitoes transmit all manner of disease.
Better solution: Stopping sending aid money to Africa, period, regardless of the reason. We’ve spent trillions in the last 60 years and for what?
For a few trillion more dollars we can have a program to teach them to brush after every meal and wash behind their ears. After all it’s our responsibility. We have to improve the world. Plus it’s a damn good living for those who administer these programs.
Wow. Just think if that money had been spent on Americans...or better yet, not taken from the taxpaying citizens.
Plus it’s a damn good living for those who administer these programs.
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And if we cut out government funding for so many of these faith based organizations that help place illegal immigrants and refugees, These groups would tend to care a whole lot less. The government is paying these groups billions and billions of dollars to dump these people on society.
Like fighting AIDS in Africa, so much of this goodwill work is about federal funding. Some folks are able to cash in nicely off these grants.
And who will save our white brothers and sisters in South Africa?
Of course, a certain foundation’s giving out watered down HIV drugs certainly didn’t help either.
Coming on the tails of decades of programs promoting anal sex as a birth control method, a five year program would have to be pretty dramatic to change much in the way of appropriate behaviors.
I thought they had been very successful, specifically in Uganda. But I haven’t been following their progress.
Agreed. Africa needs to make significant changes in order to enter the modern age. The more money we send to them, the less likely they will be to make the changes they need to make.
So does indiscriminate promiscuous sex. In Africa, AIDS is primarily a heterosexual disease that spreads through families with mothers infecting their unborn children as well
Foreign or Domestic!
So they can overpopulate and relocate here as refugees, it’s the heart of the plan.
In 1990, AIDS was prevalent in Uganda, with up to 25% of pregnant women infected, and was almost unheard of in South Africa.
An abstinence program started and supported by President Museveni brought about a dramatic decline in new HIV infections, even without widespread antiretroviral therapy.
Meanwhile, South Africa was invaded by "safe sex" promoting NGOs from the US, Canada, and Western Europe. When I was there in 2000, there were sex-positive messages in your face everywhere I went.
AIDS in SA exploded after 1990, and it is now one of the most heavily infected places on Earth.
Museveni was booed off the stage as he attempted to deliver an address at the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto in 2006. AIDS activists hate and work to suppress abstinence programs, because they contradict their prime underlying message of radical sexual freedom.
But not this one.
Doesn’t seem to help much. They may be wired differently from a hormonal standpoint and often completely lack self control.
Count on the left to reject any solution to a problem that involves self control. Where it is practiced, abstinence before marriage eliminates sexually transmitted diseases. No need to spend any government money — our ancestors practiced abstinence without spending anything, and the Muslims do likewise with fellow Muslims today.
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