The US has spent $1.4 billion promoting abstinence in Africa

[BobStackFan4Life]

In the past 12 years, the U.S. has spent more than $1.4 billion funding abstinence programs in Africa. They're part of a larger program — called the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief — aimed at stopping the spread of HIV around the world.

But a study, published Monday in Health Affairs, finds the abstinence programs have been a failure.

When President George W. Bush proposed PEPFAR in 2003, it was an unprecedented plan. The program would give billions of dollars to test and treat people for HIV in Africa. No one had ever given this much money to fight a single disease.

Congress funded the program with bipartisan support. But one part of the plan was controversial: A third of the money going toward HIV prevention was earmarked for programs teaching abstinence before marriage and faithfulness. This included sex education classes in schools and public health announcements on billboards and the radio.

The earmark was added to please some Republicans, Dietrich says, "who wanted to make sure the money wouldn't be spent on anything that might be seen as promoting teenage sex or promiscuity."

The results were clear: PEPFAR funding wasn't associated with changes in young people's choices about sex. Bendavid and his team could find no detectable differences in the rates of teenage pregnancies, average number of sexual partners and age at first sexual intercourse in countries that had received PEFPAR money compared with those that hadn't.

http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/05/03/476601108/u-s-spent-1-4-billion-to-stop-hiv-by-promoting-abstinence-did-it-work?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=movies&utm_term=artsculture&utm_content=20160504