Goner

AIDS envoy demands US give more condoms

By Lawrence Altman

August 31,

The US Government's emphasis on abstinence programs to prevent AIDS is hobbling Africa's battle against the pandemic by playing down the role of condoms, a top United Nations official has charged.

The UN secretary-general's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, Stephen Lewis, said "Christian ideology" was driving the US AIDS assistance program with disastrous results such as a shortage of condoms in Uganda.

The charges were disputed by the Ugandan Government and an official of President George Bush's emergency plan for AIDS relief, known as PEPFAR. The plan emphasises a policy known as ABC, which stands for abstinence, be faithful, and use condoms.

The dispute comes less than a week after the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a public-private partnership based in Geneva, suspended $US201 million ($267 million) in grants to Uganda because of government mismanagement.

According to the Bush Administration's critics, Uganda needs at least 120 million condoms a year but that this year's supply of fewer than 30 million condoms, to be distributed at health clinics, had been exhausted. Privately purchased condoms had more than tripled in price, making them unaffordable for many Ugandans, the critics said.

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AdvertisementCondoms have become difficult to find in cities, even for a price, and are unavailable in many rural areas, the critics said, and some men have begun using garbage bags as condom substitutes to prevent HIV infection.

But Uganda's state minister for health, Mike Mukula, told The Daily Monitor newspaper in Kampala the country had enough condoms. "We just procured 65 million condoms about two months ago and another 80 million is on the way," he said.

The country used about 5 million condoms a month and there was no cause for concern about a shortage, he said.