Chalk up another few thousand deaths for abstinence-only education

[loinburger]

link

Aids activists and development officials point to the 130,000 Ugandans infected with HIV last year alone - up from 70,000 in 2002 - and say the recent obsession with abstinence is handicapping the country's once-successful fight against the virus.

Under the previous "balanced" strategy, condom distribution grew from four million a year to 118 million by 2001. Thanks to the abstinence message, teenagers lost their virginity about 18 months later than before. People with several partners realised they needed to stop sleeping around so much. In 1992, one in five Ugandans had Aids. By 2001 that dropped to one in 20.

Uganda's evangelicals preach that abstinence is the only way to halt the spread of the virus. The trusted and influential first lady, Janet Museveni, is a born-again Christian. She has publicly equated condom use with theft and murder and said that Aids is God's way of punishing immoral behaviour. The first lady also offers scholarships to girls who can prove they are virgins.

"The evangelicals are absolutely right: abstinence is the best way of preventing the spread of HIV/Aids," says Sigurd Illing, the EU ambassador to Uganda. "But some people aren't receptive. We need an end to this bedevilling of condoms by people who take a high moralistic stance and don't care about the impact that this has on reality."

[Tattila the Hun]

Hmm, local newspaper ran a story on this just today. I blame religion, and the overly patriarcal society.

[Dinner]

We should just admite that religious fundimentalists are evil because their actions result in millions of people dying.

[BeBMan]

Re: Chalk up another few thousand deaths for abstinence-only education

She has publicly equated condom use with theft and murder and said that Aids is God's way of punishing immoral behaviour

Now if that isn't helpful I don't know what is.

[BlackCat]

@ Oerdin - You totally ignores the fact that thousands of souls are saved and guaranteed an eternal life in heaven. Those evil sinners that die of aids just get their rightful punishment when they go to hell.

[Dinner]

Of course. How silly of me.

[Ben Kenobi]

Questionable government figures say that 6.4 per cent of Ugandans have HIV/Aids.

And yet we are supposed to trust the higher numbers?



Here's the program in Botswana

Public education & awareness
Education for young people
Condom distribution & education
Targeting of highly mobile populations
Improvement of blood safety
Prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV (PMTCT)

And the corresponding HIV rate...

This, in a country with a total population below two million, gives Botswana an adult HIV prevalence rate of 24.1%, the second highest in the world after Swaziland. (An earlier UNAIDS estimate of 37.3% prevalence in Botswana is now thought to have been too high

http://www.avert.org/aidsbotswana.htm

So I think I'll take Uganda's approach.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi

Questionable government figures say that 6.4 per cent of Ugandans have HIV/Aids.

And yet we are supposed to trust the higher numbers?

You have a very selective interpretation of what it means for figures to be "questionable."

Not everyone is sad about the escalating epidemic. In a roadside timber yard near Kampala's Mulago Hospital, coffin makers report that business has never been better. "Three years ago, I sell 15 coffins a week. Now it is 20 adult coffins and seven children's coffins," says Lawrence Kiwanuka, the jovial boss of an expanding workforce of 25 carpenters. "I think the Aids deaths are really more than the government says." So is he happy more people are dying from Aids? He laughs: "That is a very difficult question."

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Here's the program in Botswana

That's a red herring. How long as the program been in place? What percentage of the population had AIDS before the program was put in place? How much funding does the program receive?

Uganda is a case where the balanced program (correlated with a reduction of HIV cases) was replaced with an AO program (correlated with an increase in HIV cases). Botswana is a case where you're throwing around figures without any attempt at drawing a correlation beyond "this is their stated program, these are the results, my oracular knowledge says that AO would have produced better results, praise Jesus."

[GePap]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi

So I think I'll take Uganda's approach.

Really, Cause Uganda's approach was ABC

Abstinance
Be faithful
CONDOMS.

Its is this approach that kept the rate down, that and extensive government support.

Just this week PBS had a two part program, 4 hours of Frontline on "The Age of AIDS". Wonderful program, incredibly informative, I recommend it highly for everyone.

President Museveni of Uganda is interviewed, as is the founder of Uganda's first and most successful grass roots anti-AIDS program, TASO. I forget her name, but she has done so much to combat AIDS, has met with Musevini, heck, twice with Bush himself.

And what did she say? She tought Bush was a wonderful caring man, but the policies of his administration were bad. She stated that Uganda's policy was always to preach abstinance and faith, but knowing that those strategies were not for everyone, always advocating the use of Condoms.

[Ben Kenobi]

All your source says is that we ought to be skeptical of the numbers representing the number of AIDS infections in Uganda.

Fair enough. My point is that if we are being skeptical, then how do we know to trust the higher figures which seem to be the whole point of the article?

Skepticism in one instance and blind faith in the other seems drastically unwarranted.

That's a red herring. How long as the program been in place? What percentage of the population had AIDS before the program was put in place? How much funding does the program receive?

Bill Gates is one of the donors. The Botswana program has ample funding available.

The point I am trying to make is that you are gaging the Uganda program based on the results that we see. Now, why can't we also hold the folks in Botswana accountable for the fact that even though they have pushed condoms there extensively that their rate has not changed appreciably?

I'm not saying, look Botswana's higher then Uganda, but rather, why is it that Botswana's program has shown no change whatsoever, despite the fact that they are doing everything 'right' in promoting education, and condoms, etc.

[Ben Kenobi]

Really, Cause Uganda's approach was ABC

Abstinance
Be faithful
CONDOMS.

Yep. Look at the Botswana program. Not a mention of staying with your partner or abstinence whatsoever. Condoms were seen as a last resort in ABC, and I believe I have posted exactly that in previous threads.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi


Yep. Look at the Botswana program. Not a mention of staying with your partner or abstinence whatsoever. Condoms were seen as a last resort in ABC, and I believe I have posted exactly that in previous threads.

Condoms are a resort, not "last.

I found the woman's name, Noereen Kaleeba.

A link to her full interview:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/aids/interviews/kaleeba.html

And what does this woman, who has done so much against AIDS in her country say about Condoms?

The ABC: Now, speaking as a Ugandan, I know that what has brought Uganda as far as it is today has been A, B [and] C together, not one of them singly. But what I hear now is, "Oh, now it's just A and B" -- abstinence and being faithful. There is some kind of a campaign to be quiet about the condom discussion, which is a disaster. It's a real cocktail for disaster, and I think for a person like me, who has been personally robbed not only of her husband but of many of my siblings, many of my friends, this debate of condom or no condom really makes me angry, because I know for a fact my husband had HIV; I don't have HIV. If you ask me to put it on record what actually protected me from his infection, it was a condom. We were using condoms for birth control.

We didn't know he had HIV … until he was diagnosed. I know for a fact if we hadn't been using condoms, I would have been infected by now. I also know that this divisive debate about whether abstinence works or doesn't work -- yes, abstinence works for some people for some time, but you can't say that abstinence works for everybody all the time. So really, we should stop this debate, I feel.

[GePap]

And a link to the Frontline show. As I said, I recommended immsensely.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/aids/

And a map showing the spread and prevelance of AIDS globally:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/aids/atlas/world.html

[Ben Kenobi]

I'm not sure your point gepap. Ms. Kaleeba is saying that she was inadvertantly protected through her condom use. I sincerely doubt that she preferred her first line of defense to be a condom.

[Ben Kenobi]

dp