Brazil: Promoting Abstinence Ineffective Against AIDS

This article describes the effectiveness of Brazil's campaign against AIDS. According to the author, Irwin Arieff, the incidences of the disease are comparatively lower because of the widespread distribution of condoms to young people, combined with a preventive education programme, and free access by infected individuals to anti-AIDS drugs. Arieff offers the statistic that fewer than 0.6 percent of Brazil's 182 million people have been reported with HIV/AIDS compared to 7.5-percent of sub-Saharan Africa's population where the epidemic is considered the most widespread.

According to Arieff, Dr. Paulo Texeira of Brazil's, Sao Paulo AIDS programme, states that "based on international experiences, today there is no evidence whatsoever that moral recommendations, such as abstinence and fidelity, have any impact that might prevent infection and curb the epidemic." Arieff notes that the Bush administration's overseas AIDS programmes "for the most part follow the 'ABC' approach, which stands for 'Abstinence, Be faithful and use Condoms.'" He then makes reference to a recent study in Uganda which found that "the abstinence part of that approach could not explain the drop in AIDS incidence there and the researchers suggested it was condom use."

A U.S. envoy to the United Nations, Sichan Siv describes the United States's AIDS overseas programmes as focusing on supporting individual governments strategies based on the culture and circumstances of each place and the individuals and groups that are being targeted. Arieff notes that the United States seeks to inject anti-abortion language into draft resolutions on AIDS and development that the U.N. commission is working on.

Dr. Paulo Texeira stands by Brazil's approach to HIV/AIDS and says they "are aware that the promotion of safer sex involves serious cultural, ethical, and religious matters, but we cannot allow them to become a barrier for prevention..."