This is the kind of news we will never see reported in the condom-fixated, free-sex-at-any-cost liberal media, and they will never ever admit that strategies involving self-discipline will always be far more effective than a rubber thingy that raises false confidence among its users ("In gum we trust!"). Much less, apologize to the Pope, who certainly needs no vindication for what he said last year about condoms and AIDS, but it's always good to have more studies behind him. Sorry I didn't see this item earlier...
UN study backs
Church strategy on AIDS
By Paul Jeffrey
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
A new UN studyn AIDS has lent credibility to faith leaders who have long argued that behavioural change is key to combating the spread of the illness, a Catholic expert on the disease has said.
Mgr Robert Vitillo, special adviser to Caritas Internationalis on HIV and Aids, said: “Within the United Nations there is more and more attention to focusing on abstinence and the reduction of the number of sexual partners as well as the strategy of promoting condoms. This is a validation of what we’ve done.”
Mgr Vitillo and other Catholics who work with people living with HIV and Aids joined thousands of researchers, politicians and activists from around the world for the XVIII International Aids Conference on July 18-23 in Vienna.
The biennial conference takes place as new studies indicate progress is being made in lowering the HIV infection rate among young people in several countries around the world.
A study from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids released last week showed that HIV prevalence among young people has declined by more than 25 per cent in 15 of the 21 most-affected countries.
In eight countries, according to the report,
the declines in HIV prevalence have resulted, at least in part, from positive changes in sexual behaviour among young people, including youth waiting longer before they become sexually active and having fewer partners.
Mgr Vitillo said
other recent studies had shown that behavioural change had more to do with reducing HIV infection in countries such as Uganda and Kenya than promoting condom use.
Mgr Vitillo, who is based in Geneva and works closely with UN agencies and other international organisations, admitted that respect for the Church’s approach was not universal.
“I was involved in a UN AIDS group that developed a strategic framework on HIV prevention. It was a small group, and there were some protests that they’d invited someone from the Catholic Church, especially me, a priest. But there were others in the group who said: ‘No, the Catholic Church has excellent prevention programmes and a valid approach to prevention,’” Mgr Vitillo said.
Activists at the Vienna conference said, however, that recent progress in combating the effects of the virus was at risk because of declining financial support for care and treatment of those living with HIV and AIDS.
A new analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation and UN AIDS shows that donor governments provided £5 billion for AIDS relief in 2009, compared with the more than £5 billion disbursed in 2008. Those figures ended a run of annual double digit percentage point increases in donor support for international AIDS assistance since at least 2002, when donor governments provided £787 million.
The opening session of the conference was interrupted by hundreds of activists who staged a “die-in” to protest the cuts in international Aids funding.
Mgr Vitillo said the funding decline was already affecting the Church’s work.
“I was in Uganda in June and our care workers are being told that no new patients should be put on the rolls, and in some cases people are being dropped,” he said.
“Some newly diagnosed families are being told that they have to choose which person will get treatment. Given the culture of Africa, what that means is that the family will divide up the medication to share it among several members. As a result, no one will get well,” he said.
Mgr Vitillo said there was more to the funding cuts than a bad world economy, however.
“Part of this is the result of the global economic crisis. But inevitably when we cut back it’s the most vulnerable populations that are most affected, because they don’t have much of a voice,” he said.
“There is no uproar, like that which would come from big business interests if they were cut back. We have scrambled to get back to giving bonuses to the bankers who started the economic crisis, but not to the vulnerable who are victims of it. There are sufficient resources out there, if we choose to change how we prioritise our global resources.”
Before the international AIDS conference Mgr Vitillo joined more than 100 other Catholic Aids workers from 23 countries in a two-day conference to discuss their work. Many Catholics also participated in a one-day interfaith conference sponsored by the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance, an international network of churches and church agencies.
Participants in the latter conference were challenged by Aids activists to step up their commitment to accepting people living with HIV.
Kevin Moody, international co-ordinator and CEO of the Global Network of People Living with HIV, told the ecumenical conference that despite a lot of progress, religious leaders continue to be accomplices in worsening the suffering of people living with HIV and AIDS.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 29/07/2010 02:47]