The problem of Africa was a major theme of discussion at this week’s G-8 summit in Japan. The solution — as it inevitably is when political leaders decide to solve a problem — was financial aid. They reaffirmed a previous commitment to spend $60 billion over the next five years to fight AIDS and other infectious diseases that are devastating the African continent.
According to the UN, G-8 AIDS funding reached a record-breaking $6.6 billion in 2007. The current projected figures will certainly surpass that sum to produce a new record for AIDS spending in Africa, yet it’s still not enough for global AIDS leaders.
They say the commitment falls “short of expectations” and tossed out the figure of $173 billion as being more realistic (which it might be if AIDS was the world’s only problem).
But even as the elites in the AIDS bureaucracy were demanding more, the potential aid recipients were likely cringing at the thought of billions more coming their way from the West — because they know any aid will be tied to full acceptance of a western agenda to stem the tide of AIDS. They also know that agenda simply won’t work in Africa (heck, it doesn’t even work here).
A damning indictment of the West’s attempts to save Africa from AIDS appeared in the June 30 issue of the Washington Post. The writer was Sam L. Ruteikara, co-chair of Uganda’s National AIDS Prevention Committee, and he essentially told the American Senate (currently debating a $50-billion AIDS relief package for Africa) to butt out of Africa’s AIDS problem and “let my people go.”
He’s not being ungrateful. He’s being realistic in pointing out that the AIDS prevention strategies so eagerly supplied by the western experts (who also control the financial aid) have only served to increase HIV infections in his country.
Although Uganda sits in the heart of sub-Saharan Africa where tens of millions are infected and 76 per cent of the world’s 2007 AIDS deaths occurred, it stands alone as a nation that has developed a successful home-grown strategy to combat AIDS.
From 1991 to 2002, the number of Ugandans infected with HIV dropped from 21 to six per cent. Between 1989 and 1995, the number of men having three or more sexual partners in a year dropped from 15 to three per cent.
By comparison, strategies in Canada have yet to demonstrate such success. It is estimated that there were anywhere from 1,800 to 3,200 new HIV infections in 1993; by 2005, those numbers had risen to 2,300 and 4,500.
So what’s Uganda got that we don’t have?
It’s not complicated. Ugandan leaders simply recognized — and acknowledged — that the main reason for the spread of HIV was people having sex with more than one partner. So they urged people to be faithful. Their highly successful message was ABC (Abstain, Be faithful or use Condoms).
The condom message was preached — but only as a last resort.
The dramatic drop in HIV infections in a high-risk country was heralded as the AIDS success story of the ’90s, but it was virtually ignored by the West’s AIDS power brokers, who were obviously confounded by the simplicity of the campaign (it cost just 29 cents per person per year) and, more importantly, offended by the notion that the message of sexual monogamy could trump condom use.
So they quickly took hold of the principle that “if everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something” and complained to the international community that Ugandans were “wrong to try to limit people’s sexual freedom.”
They then wielded the power of their AIDS support dollars to create a new, westernized strategy for prevention that ignored any mention of faithfulness/abstinence and focused instead on, you guessed it, the almighty condom.
The strategy also “altered” statistics to suggest that the HIV infection rate among married couples was 42 per cent instead of the 6.3 per cent determined by previous surveys.
When the statistic was questioned, the AIDS advisers who had assumed control of Uganda’s AIDS prevention program refused to provide the source.
The result of this new strategy? Ugandan HIV rates went up .
Nicely done, international AIDS “experts.” You managed to nip success in the bud by supplanting a successful and proven prevention strategy with one that exacerbates HIV infection rates.
For any who still question whether AIDS strategies for prevention and education are rooted more in ideology than science, the answer is clear.
Our western commitment to foster sexual freedom at any cost is clearly at odds with our stated goals of preventing HIV infection — both here and in Africa.
Promoting monogamy reduces AIDS and costs pennies in comparison to the billions of dollars we invest in AIDS prevention strategies.
This money is needed for AIDS treatment and medicine, and we are tossing it to the wind by making our global battle against AIDS far more complicated and costly than it needs to be.
No wonder Ruteikara derides western aid. No wonder he writes: “We understand that casual sex is dear to you, but staying alive is dear to us. Listen to African wisdom, and we will show you how to prevent AIDS.”
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