ACT UP New York | African Services Committee | Health GAP (Global Access Project)
www.healthgap.org

For Immediate Release: August 30, 2005
Contact:
Sharonann Lynch - 646.645.5225
Aaron Boyle - 917.621.6667

AIDS ACTIVIST PROTEST UGANDA'S CONDOM SHORTAGE: CALLS FOR GOVERNMENT TO UNLOCK THE CONDOMS
AND REJECT ABSTINENCE ONLY APPROACHES

AIDS activists protest at Ugandan Mission to the United Nations as Uganda's much-lauded HIV prevention program erodes into U.S. financed abstinence-until-marriage approaches.

(Manhattan) A coalition of AIDS activists held a demonstration in midtown Manhattan outside of the Ugandan Permanent Mission to the United Nations today to bring attention to that nation's severe condom shortage which is putting people at dangerous risk of HIV infection. The crisis has developed over the past ten months as the government of Uganda has stopped its robust program of distributing condoms that previously accounted for 80% of the condoms available in the country.

Dozens of activists delivered a giant key to Mission officials labeled: "Unlock the condoms. Unlock the truth: Condoms Work."

In October 2004, concerns over the smell of a batch of the government brand of condoms, Engabu, led to their recall from Ugandan health clinics which caused an immediate shortage of condoms across the country. "The Ugandan government has allowed the shortage to persist for the last 10 months. This is an artificial shortage because the condoms are there. It is the government's willingness to distribute them and support condom use that is in short supply," said Sharonann Lynch of Health GAP.

Since May 2004, new shipments--some 30 million quality-approved condoms--have been sitting in government warehouses. Activists are demanding to know why, nearly a year into the shortage, health clinics are still unsupplied and the government is refusing to state when or how they will distribute the condoms.

"This apparent 'Zero Condom Policy' of Uganda marks another alarming shift away from the government's established HIV prevention approaches which have been at work since the early 1980's," said Aaron Boyle of Health GAP. Uganda was able to achieve a significant drop in HIV prevalence from 15% to 6% over the past two decades, which many experts attribute to comprehensive prevention efforts, including social promotion of condoms. Now activists in Uganda say the program has been overtaken by abstinence-until-marriage approaches as President Museveni and his wife Janet are aligning Uganda's policies with the ideology touted--and financed--by the United States government.

Uganda is a country receiving funds from the President Bush's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). The program requires a minimum of 33% of its prevention funds to be used for abstinence-until-marriage programs, and limits the distribution of condoms to specific high risk groups. "Although scientific studies continually demonstrate the decreased effectiveness of abstinence-only approaches, the influence of the U.S. government is prevailing in Uganda. The so-called high risk groups eligible for condoms amounts to pushing condoms through a straw and neglecting the majority of the population vulnerable to HIV," said Eustacia Smith of Health GAP.

Today's protesters, including members of ACT UP New York, African Services Committee, and the Bondala group of Harlem United, are demanding the release of condoms and a return to condoms as an integral prevention strategy in Uganda's HIV/AIDS program.

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