Dear Colleague:
Money and ideology are more important to U.N. apparatchiks than saving
lives in Africa, which explains their fervent advocacy of risky condoms
over effective abstinence programs in preventing HIV/AIDS.
Steven W. Mosher
President
PRI Weekly Briefing
13 October 2005
Vol. 7 / No. 40
UN AIDS Envoy Can't Stomach Abstinence
By Joseph A. D'Agostino
Stephen Lewis, the United Nations' special envoy to Africa for HIV/AIDS,
has little good to say about the Bush Administration's efforts there.
That the United States is spending more money than any other nation on
stopping the spread of AIDS in Africa counts for little. He is upset with
the U.S. emphasis on abstinence, which he accuses of causing a condom
shortage in Uganda.
Now Uganda happens to be the only sub-Saharan African country that has
achieved a large reduction in her HIV prevalence rate. Its adult HIV
infection rate has dropped from 18% to 5-7%. No other nation in the world
has achieved such success. Most sub-Saharan African nations, following
the pro-condoms model, continue to suffer from rising HIV infection rates.
But then, other African nations do not have leaders like Ugandan
President Museveni and his wife. This dynamic duo has consistently
promoted an abstinence-first model that has successfully changed Ugandan
culture. Ugandan surveys show a reduction in premarital sexual activity
among Ugandan youth and a reduction in extramarital acitivty among adults.
The result: less AIDS.
This is, in Lewis's worldview, all wrong. He complains that the Bush
Administration's shift of funding from condoms to abstinence promotion
under its PEPFAR program has led to a shortage of the prophylactics in
Uganda. "There is no doubt in my mind that the condom crisis in Uganda is
being driven by PEPFAR," said Lewis. "To impose a dogma-driven policy
that is fundamentally flawed is doing damage to Africa."
This is a bizarre inversion of the truth, and threatens to do grievous
harm to the one HIV/AIDS prevention approach that has actually worked.
Uganda's health minister, Jim Muhwezi, denies that there is any shortage
of condoms in his country. "It is not true that there is a condom
shortage," he said. "There seems to be a coordinated smear campaign by
those who do not want to use any other alternative simultaneously with
condoms against AIDS." In fact, Uganda officially uses the ABC approach:
Abstinence before marriage, be faithful in marriage, and use condoms if
you don't do one or two.
But this isn't good enough for UN officials, whose love affair with
condoms knows no bounds, and who are also angry with America for funding
her own AIDS initiative in Africa instead of giving the money to them.
"Alas, from Stephen Lewis's point of view, the U.S. is deplorably
'unilateralist' and spends its billions of AIDS dollars directly in Africa
rather than sluicing them through the UN, where now that the Oil-for-Fraud
program is no longer 'needed,' many bureaucrats are itching to bring their
humanitarian expertise and efficiency to bear on another great slab of
cash," wrote Mark Steyn in the Canadian Western Standard, Oct. 3. "Once
the usual UN administration fee had been deducted from Bush's pitifully
inadequate $15 billion, there could easily have been enough left over to
buy, oh, twenty thousand bucks' worth of second-hand condoms from a rubber
factory co-owned by a nephew of Kofi Annan and a cousin of Boutros
Boutros-Ghali. Instead, the U.S. decided to spend the cash itself."
Why not? The UN's approach has failed, and its own statistics show it.
HIV rates keep rising, to over 30% in some countries. Two decades of
pornographic sex education and massive shipments of condoms have sent
millions of young Africans to an early grave.
But who on the Left cares about the facts? The UK Guardian sneers at
Ugandan First Lady Janet Museveni's abstinence campaign, ominously hinting
that it is driven by her Christian beliefs. It scorns the poster
campaigns that Mrs. Museveni has backed. "In one poster campaign, signed
by the office of the first lady, the slogan alongside the picture of a
smiling young woman says: 'She's saving herself for marriage--how about
you?'" said the paper.
It is this sort of thing that the UN and left-wing newspapers fear that
Bush is going to promote in Africa.
Lewis is no new kid on the block shooting his mouth off. A former
Canadian ambassador to the United Nations and former Deputy Executive
Director of UNICEF, he is a long-time member of the establishment. His
wife, Michele Landsberg, is a pro-abortion feminist activist and former
columnist for the Toronto Star.
In August, the Global Fund for Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria pulled all
funding from Uganda's highly successful AIDS prevention program, alleging
financial irregularities.
Apparently, achieving results isn't good enough for international
grandees. It's death by condom or nothing. But we think the Bush
Administration will stay the course.
Joseph A. D'Agostino is Vice President for Communications at the
Population Research Institute.
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Media Contact: Joseph A. D'Agostino
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