The real ABC behind getting SAVED

This new approach, developed by the African religious group African Network of Religious Leaders Living with or personally affected by HIV and AIDS (ANERELA), represents a significant turn around from the Abstinence, Be faithful and Condomise (ABC) approach. In fact, my information is that SAVED is the brainchild of an HIV-positive priest who is the driving force behind ANERELA, Rev Gideon Byamugisha.

Rev Byamugisha is an Anglican cleric in the east African nation of Uganda who discovered he was HIV-positive in 1992 and immediately went public about his condition. He does not know how he got infected but speculates it may have been the result of a blood transfusion, although he does not rule out sexual intercourse since he did not take an HIV test at the time of his marriage.

Rev Byamugisha’s wife died of what was believed to be pneumonia just weeks before he discovered that he was HIV-positive. He only discovered that she too had been infected after her death.

An author of several books about AIDS, Rev Byamugisha has been at the forefront of the battle against AIDS in Africa. However, many of his views on the disease run counter to the very ABC approach which resulted in a dramatic reduction in the spread of the disease in his own country.

His rallying cry is: “The only good priest is the condom distributing priest.”

In addition, this outspoken cleric has been critical of the abstinence approach to preventing the spread of HIV-AIDS. The SAVED acronym that he now passionately advocates has been deemed by some AIDS experts to be nothing more than a return to the old medical, risk reduction approach which has yielded few, if any, benefits.

On the faced of it, SAVED may appear to be a good idea. To give it additional selling power, it borrows the language of evangelical Christianity, a strategy aimed at winning over more African clerics to that cause.

However, at least one tireless AIDS campaigner, whose views on the issue I respect, is warning that SAVED bolsters the condom interests who are determined to save their multi-billion dollar industry. He believes the AIDS industry will go to any lengths to keep AIDS prevention from limiting sexual freedom — inclusive of condom/drug sales.

That is the reason why my learned colleague strongly believes there is “such intense, irrational fear over simple programmes of abstinence and fidelity — programmes that Africans and other relate to immediately”.

My colleague, who is a strong supporter of the ABC approach because, in his view it is low-cost, low-tech and sustainable, says SAVED takes the AIDS battle back to the failed strategies of the 1990s which are high-tech, unsustainable and medical. He points out that such an approach has “failed spectacularly” in Africa and other parts of the world.

He reports: “HIV infection rates are now rising again in Uganda because ideologues have been successful in removing much of the A and B parts of ABC — although there has been a recent push-back. Meanwhile, there have been new successes in Kenya and Zimbabwe because of A and B, rather than C.”

The condom industry is a huge, multi-billion dollar global business which profits from the high rate of casual, multi-partner sexual practices. In is in their interest to promote the view, misleading as it is, that the spread of HIV/AIDS can best be prevented through condom use. Never mind that decades of research shows people do not use condoms consistently or at all in long-term relationships.

On the other hand, there is clear evidence that ABC worked in Uganda which was in the throes of a deadly epidemic when the authorities there introduced that approach, discouraging multi-partner sex and enforcing rape and seduction laws, while still distributing condoms to high-risk groups.

In a paper prepared by a senior research scientist at Harvard Centre for Population and Development Studies it is stated: “The broad trend in Africa is toward high levels of monogamy, fidelity and abstinence, and the trend in HIV prevalence is incrementally downward.

“We now see HIV prevalence decline in Kenya, Zimbabwe, Senegal and probably other African countries as well. These welcome trends have come about in spite of the paucity of programmes aimed at promoting fidelity and abstinence.

“The United States is the first major donor to include such programmes in global AIDS prevention. This initiative (ABC) should be applauded and supported, not condemned as a ploy to impose ‘abstinence-only’ on Africa and the world.”

Given all the evidence gathered on successes and losses in the fight against HIV/AIDS, this attempt to replace ABC with SAVED could cost lives, not save them.

(ssheppard@newsday.co.tt)