“I am a liberal on social issues and it’s difficult to admit, but the Pope is indeed right. The best evidence we have shows that condoms do not work as an intervention intended to reduce HIV infection rates, in Africa.” Dr. Edward Green
This is the affirmation of doctor and anthropologist Edward Green one of the major world authorities in the study of ways to combat the expansion of AIDS. He is the director of the APRP a project for the prevention of AIDS in the Center of Studies on Population and Development at Harvard University in the United States. One of the most prestigious educational institutions in the world.
In an interview to journalists on the papal plane en route to Africa, Benedict XVI affirmed that AIDS is not going to be controlled only with the distribution of condoms. For the Pope, the solution is to “humanize sexuality with news ways of behavior”. For these declarations the Pope was a target of critics.
Dr. Edward Green, with 30 years of experience in the fight against AIDS treated the issued on the website National Review Online and interviewed in Ilsuodiario.net.
The study pointed out that contamination by HIV is in decline in eight or nine African countries. And says that in all these cases, persons are diminishing the number of sexual partners. “Abstinence among teenagers is also a factor, obviously. If persons begin to have sex at later age, they end by having a smaller number of partners during their life and decrease the chances of infection through HIV”, he explains
Green also points out that when some uses a technology for risk reduction, such as condoms, he runs more the risks than those that do not use them. “What we see, in fact, is an association between the growth of the use of the condom and the rise in the rates of infection. We do not know all the reasons for this. In part, this can happen though the cause of what we call “risk compensation. This means that a man using condoms believes that they are more effective than they really are, and so he ends up taking greater sexual risks.” He told Ilsuodiario.net
The doctor also affirmed that the program ABC (Abstinence, fidelity and condom – only in as a last resort), that is functioning in Uganda appears efficient for diminishing contamination.
The Government of Uganda reports that it has reduced from 30% to 7% HIV contamination with a policy of promoting sexual abstinence among singles and fidelity among the married. The use of condoms is defended only as a last resort. In the country, for example, posters encourage truckers – considered a risk group – to be faithful to their spouses.
Translated from Portuguese