quote:
In his 2003 State of the Union address to Congress, President Bush declared: "I ask the Congress to commit $15 billion over the next five years, to turn the tide against AIDS in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean." PEPFAR [President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief] is intended for the care, treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS in developing countries. Unfortunately, it has become the quintessential example of what happens when Christian conservatives take control of a key program of American foreign policy. Not since Prohibition, those "Roaring '20s," has America's modern Puritans gained such power over the most intimate aspects of private, personal life....
According to Dr. Paul Zeitz, executive director of the Global AIDS Alliance, a Washington-based AIDS advocacy group, PEPFAR "is failing to stop the global spread of AIDS and failing to help lead the world to stop this deadly disease." Zeitz and many others identify the source of PEPFAR's failure in two policy features backed by the Christian fundamentalists who control the program: the systematic discouragement of condom use and a prohibition against providing HIV/AIDS prevention services to commercial female sex workers....
First, at least a third of the monies targeted for prevention must be spent on abstinence-until-marriage programs. Second, three-fourths of the monies allocated for treatment must be spent on the purchase and distribution of antiretroviral drugs from U.S. pharmaceutical manufactures and cannot be substituted by generic alternatives. Finally, at least half of that allocated for helping children and orphans is to be provided through nonprofit, nongovernmental organizations, particularly faith-based groups.
The faith-based ideologues who control PEPFAR have replaced the widely accepted anti-AIDS approach of "ABC" with what is called the "AB" message. While they aggressively champion "Abstinence" until marriage and "Being faithful" to one's partner, the traditional reliance on the use of "Condoms" has assumed a small "c" status and been relegated to the broader "other preventions" category that includes mother-to-child transmission, blood safety, safe medical injections and control of intravenous drug use.
The revision of the "ABC" model has had particularly horrendous consequences. A major source of HIV infection is sexual transmission through commercial sex work. The administration requires organizations receiving PEPFAR funding to take an "anti-prostitution loyalty oath," a signed statement saying they oppose prostitution. As a result, many organizations that work in women's and children's healthcare refuse to sign the oath and, thus, do not qualify for U.S. support.
A review of the experiences of two countries, Uganda and Thailand, illustrates just how disastrous PEPFAR can be. In 2002, James Dobson, an evangelical leader and head of the influential group, Focus on the Family, declared that, "Uganda has made great progress against AIDS by emphasizing abstinence, not condoms." President Bush also praised Uganda as a success implementing PEPFAR's "AB" program. Sadly, according to the director general of the Uganda AIDS Commission, since it adopted the program, the rate of new HIV infections has almost doubled, from 70,000 in 2003 to 130,000 in 2005.
A similar fate has befallen Thailand. In 1991, when it adopted a "100 percent condom" program, the rate of HIV infection among female sex workers declined from 30 percent in the mid-1990s to less than 10 percent in 2004. However, with its adoption of PEPFAR anti-condom program, as a 2005 World Health Organization report found, new infections are no longer declining as rapidly as they did in the 1990s.
Another factor that alarms many who've reviewed PEPFAR's activities is its support for questionable faith-based groups to implement its programs. Congresswoman Barbara Lee (CA-D) has voiced concern with the fact that 98 percent of the faith-based foreign-aid money goes to Christian groups who, some report, are using it to further their proselytizing efforts. Others point to the crony capitalism in the awarding of contacts -- like that evident in many contracts awarded for Iraq rebuilding and Katrina recovery.
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posted 24 November 2006 01:18 PM
