Searching For Solutions To AIDS
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By Fr John Flynn, Zenit
The Catholic Church is regularly pilloried for its refusal to back the use of condoms in fighting the spread of HIV and AIDS. This nonacceptance is not only sound moral teaching, but it also has solid scientific foundations.
That’s the thesis of a book just published by the National Catholic Bioethics Center, based in Philadelphia. In "Affirming Love, Avoiding AIDS: What Africa Can Teach the West," Matthew Hanley and Jokin de Irala take a look at why efforts to stop the spread of the HIV virus in Africa have had so little success and how this is linked to the reliance on condoms.
Hanley was the HIV/AIDS technical advisor for Catholic Relief Services until 2008 and is specialized in HIV prevention. De Irala is deputy director of the Department of Preventative Medicine and Public Health at the University of Navarra in Spain.
The authors start by noting that almost all the Western institutions active in this area share the firm opinion that risk reduction strategies, such as the promotion of condom use, must be a priority. What they term the "AIDS Establishment" has concentrated on technical means rather than on behavioral change.
The exception to this was the change in policy by the United States to adopt an ABC strategy following the success of Uganda in using this approach to deal with AIDS. The "A" stands for abstinence, "B" for be faithful, and "C" for condom use.
It's the first two parts to this strategy that are crucial, the book argues. In fact, wherever there has been falling HIV rates in Africa, it has been the result of fundamental changes in sexual behavior.
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