Aug

30

UN Official Says US Abstinence Policy Is Creating A Disaster

August 30, 2005 |

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.

Considering that the US spends $12 for Safe Sex and Contraceptives for every $1 spent on Abstinence, we certainly are not causing any crisis. Just two years ago Congress funded $15 billion dollars over 5 years in Africa, Asia and Caribbean. In 2005 we will spend nearly $2.4 billion to fight AIDS, nearly twice that of all other governments combined.

Aside from the obvious, has anybody asked ‘Why should the US fund the worlds illicit behavior which is driving the HIV problem in the first place?’ One needs only remember that the aloof comments were made by representatives of that great organization which brought us the ‘Oil For Food‘ program. Wasn’t that a stellar success!


Comments

2 Comments so far

  1. Conservative Culture » Happy Birthday - Conservative Culture 1 year old! on August 30, 2006 10:02 pm

    [...] What was our first article? UN Official Says US Abstinence Policy Is Creating A Disaster Feedbacks on this entry via RSS 2.0 Please leave a Comment or discuss via Trackback! [...]

  2. onion-eyed countryside on October 20, 2007 3:30 pm

    Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining — Jeff Raskin

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