ravings of a semi-sane madwoman

abstinance does NOT work. you can pledge all you want, MANY break that pledge. to have help be conditional (on some type of united states faith beliefs) and have faith based groups dispensing ADVISE about aids is simply not sound. condoms work far better than pretending you are a virgin

Public health and religion: Aids, America, abstinence...
Uganda was a beacon of hope in Africa's struggle against HIV, but the Christian right's grip on US policy is undermining this effort with fatal consequences, reports Oliver Duff from Kampala

No No sex! No No Sex!" The chant startles slumbering bats from their trees, repeated until you are left in no doubt that the 3,000 students crammed around this swimming pool really mean what they shout.

"Praise God, I have been saved!" says Isaac Ichila, 24, with a young crowd hanging on every word. "We are fighting the enemy of humanity which is HIV/Aids. It is killing us. I was a drunkard and I slept with 17 women before university. So I took the pledge to abstain from sex and have kept my promise to God. I am physically and psychologically pure."

Isaac is one of those who gather every Saturday night to listen to pro-chastity music and sermons at Uganda's prestigious Makerere University. Abstinence-until-marriage pledge cards fly around for students to sign. Simon Peter Onaba, 24, cautions a friend against flirting with women. "Sex is a progression," he warns. "One minute, you are holding hands with a girl, the next kissing. Don't go in a room with one man and one woman otherwise your pants will go off! Sex is so powerful." Then the clincher: "Remember condoms don't prevent Aids. They have a high failure rate.".......

.........Health workers see the fingerprints of America's Christian right all over the chastity message and believe the Bush administration is using its financial might to bully them into accepting evangelical ideology at the expense of public health.

Aids may have killed one million Ugandans and infected a further million but the latest crisis seems strange when you consider that foreign donors still hold up Uganda as Africa's Aids success story. What's more, under Bush's 2003 Emergency Plan For Aids Relief, where he pledged $15bn (£8bn) to fighting Aids in the worst-afflicted countries, Uganda receives more US money than ever: doubling in two years to $169.9m in 2006. But that cash comes with conditions: in a gesture to the Christian right in the US, at least one-third of all prevention money must go to "abstinence-only" projects - $10m in Uganda in 2005. Critics counting each new infection in field clinics say this has dangerously skewed Uganda's previous "balanced" approach which seemed to be working.......

........."Abstinence is not a message that children with no money listen to (ms ssebuggwawo, it's NOT a message MANY young people listen to, money or not. we have to be real about this. have our feet plantend on the ground, NOT the heavens)," says Maurisia Ssebuggwawo, 58, a volunteer midwife who gives advice at a local youth club, gated and patrolled by armed guards to protect the paltry stock of Aids drugs. "They need condoms and don't have any, because they are so expensive..........