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Jim Cowan

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Uganda

One of the first things I saw, driving from the airport at Entebbe into Kampala, was huge billboard promoting the ABC behaviors - "Abstinence, Be faithful, use a Condom", but if you look at this poster, which was outside my hotel, only the A and B are mentioned.

Uganda has seen a decline in the prevalence of HIV from about 17% of the population to about 7% during the ABC campaign over the past decade. Despite this incontrovertible evidence of success for the ABC public health policy, the Ugandan government, perhaps due to the influence of fundamental Christians on the president's wife, is de-emphasizing the use of condoms. At the same time, for mysterious reasons due to 'quality control', only 8 million condoms were available in Uganda in 2004. The previous year's supply was 80 million. The position of the Ugandan government may also be due to pressure from the Bush administration which, in 2005, has once again refused to disburse to the United Nations Population Fund, the meager $34 million that Congress authorized.

Note how the 'not' has been torn away from the "Why not?" in the bottom right corner of the poster. (The poster was like this when I first saw it. I didn't tear the corner off, I swear!)

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