White House's global anti-AIDS program has roadblocks, report
says
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Updated 4/5/2006 1:23 PM
By Steve Sternberg, USA TODAY
Copied as fair use
The Bush administration's emphasis on AIDS programs that advo-
cate saying no to sex until marriage represents a stumbling
block to the global AIDS response, congressional investigators
reported Tuesday.
The Bush administration's emphasis on AIDS programs that advo-
cate saying no to sex until marriage represents a stumbling
block to the global AIDS response, congressional investigators
reported Tuesday.
Though advocates praise the five-year, $15 billion President's
Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief for allowing them to attack the
disease "head on," the report says rules for how the money is
spent sometimes make it hard for AIDS workers to meet local
needs.
How the money is spent isn't just a matter of political debate.
Each day, more than 13,000 people worldwide are infected with
HIV, the report says. During the past two decades, more than 20
million people have died.
The U.S. government plans to spend $332 million on HIV preven-
tion in 2006, up from $207 million in 2004, in 15 countries in
Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. One-third must be spent on pro-
grams that promote abstinence, approaches that some public
health experts say haven't been proven effective.
"Some countries have had to cut programs that prevent mother-to-
infant HIV transmission to meet the abstinence-only provisions.
That's shocking because mother-to-infant prevention programs
work," says Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., one of several legisla-
tors who requested the investigation by Congress' non-partisan
watchdog agency, the General Accounting Office.
The Bush administration's approach is officially called ABC: Ab-
stinence before marriage, Be faithful in marriage and Condoms
for high-risk groups. But the administration has placed restric-
tions on how money is spent, and the guidance that lays out
those restrictions is confusing, the report says.
The rules limit spending for efforts to promote condom use among
young people, who account for an increasing share of new HIV in-
fections. The money can be used only to promote condoms to high-
risk groups, including sex workers, drug users and couples in
which one partner is HIV-positive.
Heather Boonstra of the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive
rights advocacy group, says the Bush plan gives health workers
"an opportunity to fight this epidemic," but "the rules that
have been superimposed on this (program) by social conservatives
give the U.S. government less flexibility to respond to public
health needs."
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said in a statement that she
plans to introduce a bill that, if it passed, would ensure that
countries receiving U.S. money to fight AIDS would get more
flexibility.
James Wagoner of Advocates for Youth says, "I don't think a rea-
sonable person can stand on the sideline any longer and say ab-
stinence-only policies allow us to deploy every tool we have for
HIV prevention."
The report drew an angry response from Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind.,
chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees public health.
He called it "incompetent" and "possibly biased."
Mark Dybul, deputy director of the Office of the Global AIDS Co-
ordinator, which administers the plan, counters that the report
endorses the administration's emphasis on the ABC approach.
He says the complaints in the GAO report stem mostly from spend-
ing shortfalls resulting from Congress' decision to supply $527
million less than the president requested for his 15 focus coun-
tries.
"There's no science backing the 33% abstinence quota," Waxman
counters. "We should leave funding decisions to officials work-
ing in these countries."
Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-04-04-gaoaids_x.htm
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