President Bush is focusing his program against AIDS in Africa on sexual abstinence and marital fidelity, relegating condoms to a distant third. It's the kind of well-meaning policy that bubbles up out of a White House prayer meeting but that will mean a lot of unnecessary deaths on the ground in Africa.
The stark reality is that what kills young women here is often not promiscuity, but marriage. Indeed, just about the deadliest thing a woman in southern Africa can do is get married.
In theory, everybody agrees on how to prevent AIDS: the ABC method, which stands for abstinence, being faithful and condoms. But the Bush administration interprets this as ABc. New administration guidelines stipulate that U.S.-financed AIDS programs for young people must focus on abstinence or, for those who are already sexually active, "returning to abstinence."
The irony is that President Bush's plan to tackle AIDS in Africa - spending far more than any previous administration - could be one of his best and most important legacies. It tackles one of the most important humanitarian challenges in the world today: at present infection rates in Zimbabwe, 85 percent of today's 15-year-olds will die of AIDS.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/30/opinion/30kristof.html?incamp=article_popular_5