By John Jalsevac
KAMPALA, Uganda, August 1, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – At the premiere of the soon-to-be-released documentary “Miss HIV” in Kampala, the wife of Uganda’s president, Janet Museveni, lamented the rise in dangerous sexual behaviour in the country and the resultant rise in HIV-AIDS rates.
According to New Vision, Musevini said that Ugandans are abandoning behavior-based solutions to HIV-AIDS in favour of methods, imported from the West, that only serve to perpetuate the disease.
“It is not too late to reverse the trend,” she said. “We can adopt our own indigenous solutions, which are less expensive and are 100% sure of preventing the spread of this deadly disease. I find it very baffling how we could throw away what worked, and embrace ideas from elsewhere. Then we watched as rates of infection soared again to claim lives.”
Musevini’s words echoed those of anti-AIDS crusader Sam Ruteikara, who wrote in the Washington Post several weeks ago that Western methods of combating AIDS, which strive to protect casual sex at all costs, are being imported into Uganda and are resulting in a rise in risky sexual behavior and the overall HIV-AIDS rate.
Ruteikara lamented that the West’s encouragement of dangerous behaviours leads to an increase in the need for expensive anti-retroviral drugs. Foreign aid money, he said, could be better spent on successful AIDS-prevention strategies. “For every African who gains access to HIV treatment, six become newly infected,” he said. “To treat one AIDS patient with life-prolonging anti-retroviral drugs costs more than $1,000 a year. Our successful ABC campaign cost just 29 cents per person each year.”
The ABC program heavily emphasizes abstinence and fidelity as a sure means to AIDS-prevention, and promotes condoms only as a distant last resort. Under the ABC program Uganda successfully reduced its HIV-AIDS rate from 21% to 6%.
However, at the same time as Uganda’s first lady has drawn attention to the recent increase in HIV-AIDS due to dangerous sexual practices, a prominent Western activist has demanded that foreign aid should be withdrawn from the country on account of its “homophobia.”
On Friday July 18, Peter Tatchell, the well-known founder of the pro-homosexual organization Outrage!, called for an end to US aid for, “viciously homophobic countries like Jamaica, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Uganda, Iraq and Nigeria.”
“Tyrannies should not be rewarded: No US aid for anti-gay regimes,” he said.
Earlier this month Tatchell, along with Ugandan homosexualist activist, Kizza Musinguzi, protested a meeting of traditional Anglicans in London, over their stance in favour of traditional Christian sexual morality. The two activists singled out the Ugandan church for its efforts to curb homosexual activity.
The Anglican Church in Uganda, including such well-known anti-AIDS figures as Pastor Martin Ssempa and Rev. Sam Ruteikara, strongly oppose homosexuality. As part of its AIDS-prevention activism the Church has long worked to discourage dangerous homosexual sex.
Statistics show that the HIV-AIDS infection rate is by far the highest amongst homosexual men. The most recent UNAIDS report reveals that in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa, a incredible 43% of men who only have sex with men were infected with HIV. The numbers were similarly high in Zambia, where 1 in 3 men who only have sex with men were found to have HIV. A 2006 report from the Public Health Agency of Canada revealed that this trend is not only isolated to developing nations, with 51% of Canadians infected with HIV found to be homosexual men.
According to New Vision, earlier this month Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, expressed his disagreement with homosexual behaviour. Marriage, Museveni said at a betrothal ceremony, is meant for the continuation of the human race.