OneWorld.net (U.S.)

WASHINGTON, D.C., Aug 29 (OneWorld) - The Ugandan government said Monday it had condoms aplenty even as a top United Nations envoy and U.S.-based activists charged that a U.S. emphasis on promoting abstinence was jeopardizing the East African country's previously successful efforts to fight HIV/AIDS.

''We have enough condoms. We just procured 65 million condoms about two months ago and another 80 million is on the way, so there is no shortage of condoms in the country,'' senior health ministry official Mike Mukula told The Monitor newspaper in Kampala.

''That there is a condom shortage in the country is just a rumor by people who want to spoil the image of this country,'' Mukula added.

He was responding to the U.S.-based Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE), which said that Uganda had faced a condom shortage for the past 10 months.

Uganda needs between 120 million and 150 million condoms per year but only 32 million had been distributed since last October, it added.

On Monday, Stephen Lewis, the U.N. Secretary-General's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, said U.S. cuts in funding for condoms and a new emphasis on promoting abstinence had contributed to Uganda's condom shortage.

''To impose a dogma-driven policy that is fundamentally flawed is doing damage to Africa,'' Lewis told a teleconference sponsored by health and human rights organizations.

Uganda had been one of a handful of countries to significantly cut its HIV infection rate, from 15 percent in 1992 to six percent by 2002. The United States is Uganda's main donor for HIV/AIDS prevention.

Now, that progress is at risk, according to CHANGE. The administration of President George W. Bush and the office of Uganda's first lady, Janet Museveni, have emphasized abstinence and funneled money to religious groups who push it to the detriment of the other two planks of Uganda's successful anti-AIDS platform, known as ABC for ''Abstinence, Be Faithful, and Condoms.''

''Religious fundamentalists, some financially supported by the U.S. government and the office of the first lady Janet Museveni, have become prominent in attacking condoms and those who distribute them,'' CHANGE said in a report.

In consequence, Ugandans had seen a 300 per cent increase in condom prices and free condoms could not be found at the usual distribution points, said Jodi Jacobson, CHANGE's executive director.

Human Rights Watch (HRW), a sponsor of Monday's teleconference, charged in March that U.S.-funded abstinence-only programs put millions of young Ugandans at risk of AIDS by denying them information about proven methods to protect themselves.

This violated the ''human right to information, to the highest attainable standard of health, and to life,'' the rights watchdog said.

U.S.-based Christian groups and their political allies long have promoted the programs in Uganda, elsewhere overseas, and at home. The abstinence-only approach began to take root in U.S. aid policy under President Ronald Reagan. This year, Washington has budgeted some $8 million for abstinence-only programs in Uganda alone under the. Bush administration's global AIDS plan.

Proponents credited the approach with helping Uganda's young women and men put off their first sexual encounter until some time after their 16th and 17th birthdays, respectively, where once the average young person became sexually active at age 13.

More than one million Ugandans out of a total population of around 26 million are infected with the HIV virus, which causes AIDS, and a million more have died since 1982, according to government and international figures.

Critical HIV/AIDS information was being removed from school curricula, including information about condoms, safer sex, and the risks of HIV in marriage, HRW said. Draft secondary-school materials included false statements to the effect that latex condoms were ineffective at blocking HIV and further described pre-marital sex as a form of ''deviance.'' HIV/AIDS rallies sponsored by the U.S. government spread similar falsehoods, the report said.

HRW said teachers told its investigators that U.S. contractors had instructed them not to discuss condoms in class because the new policy was ''abstinence only.'' Additionally, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni publicly condemned condoms as inappropriate for Ugandans, leading some AIDS educators to stop talking about them.

Ugandan officials told reporters at the time that the government remained committed to the ABC approach and suggested that HRW based its report on ''hearsay.''

HRW said that Ugandan public health experts, physicians, and AIDS groups had expressed concern about the current and future consequences of what effectively was proving to be a switch to an abstinence-only program.

Those fears were well grounded, HRW said. Abstinence programs have been used in the United States since 1981 and independent studies have shown them to be ineffective and potentially harmful, it added.