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Philippine AIDS Rate Has Doubled Coinciding with Increase of Condom Use

by Hilary White
 
MANILA, February 3, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Philippines Health Secretary reports that the number of  HIV/AIDS cases has doubled in the last three years from about 6000 in 2002 to 11,168 and has called upon the leadership of the Catholic Church to “allow” the government to promote condoms.
 
Health Secretary Francisco Duque told reporters that a share of the blame for the rise lies with the Catholic Church for its opposition to the use of condoms for HIV/AIDS prevention. “It's a dilemma for the (health department) to have to manage opposition from the Catholic Church because it views condoms also as a family planning method and not just a tool against HIV/AIDS,” Duque said.
 
It is a favorite gambit of most international promoters of the condom campaign to blame the Catholic Church for the AIDS crisis. Duque, however, identified homosexual men, female prostitutes and their male clients, and injecting drug users as the groups most at risk and by whom the disease has been spread: groups unlikely to be influenced by Catholic teaching on abstinence and fidelity within marriage.
 
The doubling of the Philippine rate of AIDS will not surprise observers of the African situation. In Africa, in those countries where the main strategy has been condoms and “safe sex” propaganda campaigns, the rate of HIV/AIDS has skyrocketed and shows no sign of slowing. Since the beginning of the AIDS crisis in the mid-1980’s, the Philippines has been subjected to intense international pressure to ease restrictions on condom promotion.
 
Despite government restrictions, private companies and UN-funded international NGO’s have been pushing condoms into the country. In 2004 alone, DKT, a private organization run by a well-known US pornographer, with the support of the Packard Foundation, distributed 27.8 million condoms as well as chemical abortifacients and contraceptives.
 
Thailand and the Philippines started seeing AIDS cases in the same year: 1984. That year, Thailand launched its “100% Condom Use Program” that saw condom vending machines in legal brothels, supermarkets, bars and most public places. The Philippines, however, resisted the imposition of condoms the following year and turned to promotion of abstinence.
 
In 1999 the UNAIDS reported 755,000 total confirmed cases of HIV infection in Thailand with 65,000 dead of the disease. That same year, in the Philippines, the total number of HIV cases was only 1,005. The disease had killed only 225 people.
 
As of August 2003 there were 899,000 HIV/AIDS cases documented in Thailand and approximately 125,000 deaths attributed to the disease. In the Philippines, as of September 30, 2003, there were 1,946 AIDS cases resulting in 260 deaths.
 
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Thousands Rally in Philippines to Protest Population Control Bill
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/mar/05030705.html
 
Pornographer Sues Bush over Anti-Prostitution Measure
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/aug/05082505.html

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