US Government Misinterprets Ugandan HIV/AIDS Success Story :: Essays Papers

US Government Misinterprets Ugandan HIV/AIDS Success Story The United States Government should embrace a comprehensive HIV prevention policy that emphasizes condom use, rather than the current policy which is largely based on misinterpretations of the Ugandan HIV success story. According to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)—which manages most of President Bush’s â€Å"Emergency Plan for AIDS†Ã¢â‚¬â€in 1991, 15 percent of Ugandans were infected with HIV. By 2001, the rate was 5 percent, a drop unmatched anywhere in the world. How this was done and what this means for the shape of Washington’s programs to fight AIDS overseas has been tragically misinterpreted by the US Government. According to Dr. Justin Parkhurst, who wrote his dissertation on Ugandan HIV prevention policy at the University of Oxford, Uganda was successful for reasons different than the US Government officials would have you believe. A frequent mistake, he said, is the notion that declined prevalence was due to a few specific interventions by the Ugandan government. He emphasized that the government was but one player—among numerous NGOs, church groups, community activists—in the fight against the virus. He also emphasizes that condom use, rather than abstinence and being faithful, was the most important behavior change that influenced declined HIV prevalence. â€Å"Unfounded claims of Ugandan success have persisted in international policy discourse,† he noted. Although the Ugandan experience could provide invaluable information to other nations in their prevention efforts, he said, â€Å"inappropriate recommendations based on poor interpretations of evidence must not be used as the basis for policy.† Such misguided policy pervades the US Government’s HIV prevention activities. While the Director of UNAIDS-Uganda, Dr. Ruben de Robiene, commented, â€Å"I don’t know what the Uganda Model is, no one knows,† the religious right within the US Government is convinced that it knows Uganda's secret: abstinence and being faithful. According to a USAID report, â€Å"Condom social marketing did not play a major role† in Uganda’s relative success. Dr. Anne Peterson, a physician and the USAID director of global health who is responsible for overseeing US anti-HIV programs, says, â€Å"Kids are willing and able to abstain from sex. The core of Uganda's success story is big A, big B and little C.† Dr. Peterson said the US’s HIV prevention policy is not an ideological balm for religious conservatives or any other group beholden to the Bush administration.