LifeSiteNews editor John-Henry Westen has written a strong and significant editorial comparing the views of three First Ladies (Laura Bush, Janet Museveni, and Lucy Kibaki) on the role of condom use in fighting AIDS. Very good analysis....Now which First Lady's advice is best to be taken when dealing with AIDS?
Well let's see - in Uganda with the ABC program where condoms are a very last resort, the campaign has been so successful as to be likened to a highly effective vaccine. It has reduced HIV transmission rates from 18% to 6%.
The US as well as other Western nations have been pushing condoms on Africa as a supposed means of controlling the spread of AIDS. This despite the fact that a meta analysis on "Condom Promotion for AIDS Prevention in the Developing World: Is It Working?" published in the medical journal 'Studies in Family Planning' in March of 2004, found that "In many sub-Saharan African countries, high HIV transmission rates have continued despite high rates of condom use." The study noted further that, "No clear examples have emerged yet of a country that has turned back a generalized epidemic primarily by means of condom distribution."
AIDS activists in Africa are furious with the West and its push for condoms and permissive sex education for youth. With a 2003 UNAIDS report showing that condoms are ineffective in protecting against HIV an estimated 10% of the time, can anyone be surprised that Africans are upset with the West proposing a bio-hazard Russian roulette for their children?
Writing in the same paper Mrs. Bush chose for her condom push, Edward Green, a medical anthropologist with 25 years of experience in Africa, and a senior researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health, whp noted the failure of condoms to affect HIV rates. In an article published November 29, 2003 in the Washington Post, co-authored by Tanzanian Professor Wilfred May, Green wrote "The African countries with the highest levels of condom availability -- Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa and Kenya -- also have some of the highest HIV rates in the world."
With those facts, it is no wonder that another African First Lady - Kenya's Lucy Kibaki has joined Uganda's First Lady in calling for abstinence and fidelity as the only ways to bring AIDS under control. Speaking to school girls last year, Mrs. Kibaki said that sexual abstinence before marriage, not condoms, was essential to preserving their lives and futures. "Fellow citizens, this gadget called the condom … is causing the spread of AIDS in this country", she said...
The photo above, by the way, shows some of the millions of condoms that were recalled two months ago by the South African government after samples failed an air burst test.
