UGANDA: Uganda yesterday dismissed UN claims that an emphasis on US-promoted abstinence-only programmes to fight HIV/Aids had created a "condom crisis".
Stephen Lewis, the UN secretary general's special envoy for HIV/Aids in Africa, said on Monday that Christian ideology was driving Washington's Aids assistance programme - known as Pepfar - with disastrous results such as a Ugandan condom shortage.
Uganda's junior health minister, Mike Mukula, also denied reported claims by activists in Uganda and the United States that the emphasis on abstinence-only programmes had left his country in the grip of a condom shortage so severe that men are using garbage bags in an effort to protect themselves.
"That is not true at all. Our policy is to maintain the ABC [abstinence, be faithful and use condoms] policy which actually helped Uganda to reduce the Aids prevalence rates," Mr Mukula said in a telephone interview. "The three strategies have always carried the same weight."
Uganda had been praised for cutting HIV infection rates to around 6 per cent now from 30 per cent in the early 1990s, a rare success story in Africa's battle against the disease.
But President Museveni's government has been criticised for what activists say is a reduction in the number of free condoms available due to pressure from Washington.
As part of President Bush's global Aids plan, the US government has already budgeted about $8 million this year for abstinence-only projects in Uganda, human rights groups say.
"There is no question in my mind that the condom crisis in Uganda is being driven and exacerbated by Pepfar and by the extreme policies that the administration in the US is now pursuing in the emphasis on abstinence," Mr Lewis said on Monday.