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May 21, 2007 |
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New Report Criticizes PEPFAR on Adolescents and HIV Positive Youth
Urges Congress to Shift Priorities
Washington, D.C. (May 20, 2007) Today, Advocates for Youth released a groundbreaking new report, Improving U.S. Global AIDS Policy for Young People: Assessing the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, that examines the limitations of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in preventing HIV and AIDS among youth in the targeted countries. Citing a lack of science-based practices, the report also calls on Congress to remove the 33 percent abstinence-only earmark, to prioritize HIV prevention grants to organizations with expertise in both HIV prevention and reproductive health care, and to require data collection using more precise age data.
"PEPFAR’s ‘one-size-fits-all’ policy hinders individual country efforts to fight their epidemic,” said Naina Dhingra, Advocates for Youth’s Director of International Policy and the author of the report. “The Administration’s ideological policies have left youth without the necessary tools to protect themselves from the pandemic.”
In fact, a recent study by the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health/Center for Communication (CCP) found that not all young people clearly understood the ABC (abstinence, be faithful, use a condom) strategy. A study of 100 youth, ages 15 to 25 in Namibia, found that the ABC terminology was not widespread. The youth believed that “abstinence meant ‘to be absent’ and that ‘faithfulness’ meant faith in a religious sense rather than being faithful to one’s sexual partner.”
Worldwide, teens and young adults account for almost half of all new HIV infections and more than one-third of those living with AIDS. Every day, more than 6,000 young people become infected.
"Despite these figures, the PEPFAR strategy toward young people is abstinence and only abstinence until they marry,” continued Dhingra. “This ideological emphasis has caused cutbacks in comprehensive programs, created a fear of educating young people about condom use and prevented coordination of HIV prevention with reproductive health.”
A report released in April 2007 by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the nation’s leading medical authority, confirmed that the ideological stance of PEPFAR denied young people full sexual and reproductive health information and was detrimental to countries’ attempts to fight HIV. Stating that PEPFAR’s rigidity hurts successful program implementation, the IOM concluded that, “[PEPFAR’s] budget allocations have made spending money in a particular way an end in itself rather than a means to an end – in this instance, the vitally important end of saving lives today and in the future.”
The IOM report is hardly the first time the Administration’s earmark has come into question. A year ago, the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report detailing the shortcomings of the earmark, stating that a lack of clarity about what is permitted in regard to “C” (condom activities) has created a culture of fear among PEPFAR implementing partners who are concerned about “crossing the line between providing information about condoms and promoting or marketing condoms.” One PEPFAR partner NGO said that “although the organization views condom demonstrations as appropriate in some settings it believes that condom demonstrations, even to adults, are prohibited under PEPFAR.”
Read the full report: Improving U.S. Global AIDS Policy for Young People: Assessing the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
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Advocates for Youth is a national, nonprofit organization that creates programs and supports policies that help young people make safe, responsible decisions about their sexual and reproductive health.
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