During the 1990s, HIV spread rapidly, especially in Africa, where
some 250 people were dying from AIDS every hour. In
2003, United States President George W. Bush asked Congress for
$15 billion to fight AIDS in developing countries. Most of the $15
billion in the AIDS plan is to be spent on treatment and care for
people with AIDS, but $1 billion is earmarked for HIV prevention
through abstinence-only-until-marriage education.
 The
U.S. Administration has focused on the success of Uganda's HIV prevention
initiatives to validate the $1 billion allocated for abstinence-only
programs. During the 1990s, HIV rates in Uganda dropped from 15
percent to 6 percent—an achievement unique in Africa. In 2000,
researchers at USAID began to wonder why HIV infection rates had
fallen only in Uganda and not in other African nations. They began
to discover the difference was that most countries relied too heavily
on condom promotion alone, while Uganda had
a range of programs that encouraged abstinence and faithfulness
as well as condoms. This strategy came to be known as ABC—for Abstain, Be
faithful, or use Condoms.
In 2001, Uganda's leaders began lecturing the nation about virginity
and "moral" conduct. President
Yoweri Museveni has claimed
that abstinence until marriage is a traditional African value. Before
colonial times, if an unmarried girl became pregnant, "the
punishment then for the boy and girl was death," he told an
audience of AIDS researchers in 2001. "The girl would be tied
in dry banana leaves, set on fire, and rolled down a cliff, and
the boy speared." But these traditions broke down when the
Europeans took over, he said. Society became permissive and eventually
HIV began to spread.
While virginity until marriage may have been valued in the old
days, faithfulness in marriage never was. Uganda's traditional chiefs
and kings had hundreds and sometimes thousands of wives and concubines;
polygamy, of both a formal and informal nature, remains extremely
common in Uganda. Prostitution, though officially illegal, flourishes
in Kampala's good hotels, porn magazines abound and sexual
matters such as breast implants and premature ejaculation are fervently
discussed in mainstream newspapers and on the radio. The 2004/5
country status report confirms that Ugandan adults living in urban
areas are almost twice as likely to be infected with HIV compared
to their rural counterparts, yet those in urban areas are presumably
more informed about preventive measures.
Counteracting the moral chaos of contemporary Uganda, there is
a significant revival of Christian faith taking place.
Around one-third of the Ugandan population has been "born again" in
the past decade, and new churches are springing up in warehouses,
shacks, school auditoriums, and village clearings. Promoting
the use of condoms and abstinence at the same time only confuses
young people, and sends the message that it is really OK
to be promiscuous,
states Martin
Ssempa, a pastor in Kampala, Uganda. Pastor Ssempa emphasizes
that abstinence is the most effective means of protecting one's
self from the HIV/AIDS epidemic. He also focuses on
the value of fidelity and the institution of marriage.
^TOP ABC DEFINED >
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17963
www.nybooks.com/articles/17963
Speech given at "AIDS
Care in Africa: The Way Forward," meeting sponsored by
the Rockefeller Foundation, Kampala, Uganda, April 19–21,
2001.
Rise in HIV/AIDS Slaps Uganda
in the Face: by Enoch Mutabaazi; June 1, 2006: http://www.ugpulse.com/articles/daily/homepage.asp?ID=414
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17963
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