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May 31, 2006 |
High Level UN Meeting on AIDS Opens as Former Bush AIDS Official Challenges US Global Abstinence-Only Policy
New York, NY (May 31, 2006) Led by Scott Evertz, former Bush AIDS Tsar, experts on public health and youth briefed media across from the United Nations today on how the Bush administration’s policies on HIV/AIDS are failing and leave adolescents at risk for infection of the potentially deadly disease. As teens and young adults account globally for half of new HIV infections and represent more than one-third of those living with AIDS, US policy on abstinence-only programming is having limited to no effect on reducing infection rates.
"People keep asking me if US AIDS Policy has been hijacked by the far right. I’m not sure that it’s been entirely hijacked, but let’s just say they’re on the plane,” said Scott Evertz, former Director of the Office of National AIDS Policy under President George W. Bush. “We must give young people access to comprehensive HIV prevention messages and tools, including access to condoms.”
"The world’s three billion young people hold the key to building a firewall of prevention between current and future generations,” said James Wagoner, President of Advocates for Youth. “But for youth to be a firewall they need comprehensive education that leads to survival skills. Abstinence isn’t the problem: abstinence-only is.”
Five years after the United Nations General Assembly held a Special Session to commit to global targets fighting the HIV/AIDS pandemic, world leaders are reconvening to assess progress. A high-level United States delegation is being headed by First Lady Laura Bush. Attendees of the Special Session face the reality that, to date, the world has failed miserably to protect youth from HIV infection. Every day, more than 6,000 young people around the world become infected. Currently, the United States government earmarks no less than one-third of its prevention funding to abstinence-only programs.
Dr. John Santelli of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, presented key findings from the Society for Adolescent Medicine (SAM) which show the effectiveness of domestic abstinence-only-until-marriage programs “may approach zero.” Noting that abstinence-only programs fail to fully disclose all preventative measures available to those at risk, Dr. Santelli said “These programs raise serious medical ethics concerns.”
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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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