Posted: 08/09/2005 at 6:34pm | IP Logged

Ugandan Aids Miracle Began With Godly Leadership 

By Mark Ellis
Senior Correspondent, ASSIST News Service

(ANS) -- An unusual partnership between government and religious leaders in Uganda reversed the AIDS pandemic in Uganda. The methods they employed—based on solid Christian principles—may offer the best hope for the rest of Africa.

“The only answer to the AIDS pandemic in Africa is a biblical world view,” says Professor Dick Day, founder of Sub-Saharan Africa Family Enrichment (SAFE), and co-author with Josh McDowell of the bestselling book “Why Wait? What you need to know about the teenage sexuality crisis.” (Pictured: Dick and Charlotte Day).

Day became a leading participant and eyewitness to dramatic changes that took place in Uganda beginning in the early ‘90s—changes he hopes to take to the rest of the African continent.

When President Museveni of Uganda gained power in 1986 he inherited an unfolding health crisis of immense proportions. Estimates of the prevalence of HIV infection in the general population ranged from 15 to 25 percent. The resulting social and economic fallout from the disease threatened to decimate the country.

But ignorance about the disease was not the real problem. Surveys conducted in the late ‘80s revealed that 95 percent of all Ugandans were aware AIDS is a sexually transmitted disease. “Information in itself is not enough to change the sexual behavior that is necessary to curb the pandemic,” according to Day. “The only way to change behavior is to get a paradigm shift in people’s world view,” he says.

Day happened to be in Malawi on a one-year teaching sabbatical in 1990 when he and his wife Charlotte observed the magnitude of the African crisis firsthand. Horrified, they knew the “Why Wait” message was desperately needed there and decided to remain in Malawi to address the problem.

Word about their Christian-based approach stressing abstinence and faithfulness spread to leaders in surrounding countries. President and Mrs. Museveni of Uganda had particularly receptive ears for the message. Museveni already was bucking the prevailing tide of world opinion by refusing to embrace condoms as the solution to his country’s woes. “I don’t support the idea of condoms myself,” he told the VII International AIDS Conference in 1991.

Instead, Uganda adopted an A-B-C approach to fighting AIDS: Abstinence, Be faithful, use condoms—in that order. “Museveni came out and said there is a place for condoms, but they’re not the solution to the problem,” Day notes.

In 1992, Mrs. Museveni of Uganda invited Day to be the principal speaker at a newly organized youth forum in Kampala. His “Why Wait” message seemed to resonate. “The response from the parents and youth was so positive we did a national one the following year,” Day says. The Uganda Youth Forum became a national event attended by thousands of young people each year.

Within 10 years, Uganda shocked the rest of the world as their national infection numbers fell to just five percent. “Mrs. Museveni attributed the turnaround to the beginning of addressing the youth at the youth conference,” Day says. “There’s a lot of international agencies who don’t want to accept that,” he notes. “But the research shows it was primarily the youth abstaining from premarital sex—and faithfulness to one partner after marriage—that reduced the prevalence of HIV.”

In 2004 Mrs. Museveni received the Hero Award from the Medical Institute of Sexual Health in Washington, D.C. In her remarks she said the message of abstinence and faithfulness had been effective in Uganda. She also quoted her husband: “We are being told only a thin piece of rubber stands between us and the death of our continent… (Condoms) cannot become the main means of stemming the tide of AIDS.”

Mrs. Museveni noted the greatest reduction in the number of infections occurred among young people, and this reduction occurred in the period before the onslaught of the condom campaign in Uganda. “Uganda is not out of the woods,” she said, “but at least we have proved that it is possible for people, especially young people, to change their behavior.”

“We have started a culture of respect for human life and the values that preserve life,” she added.

The Days have also introduced the “Why Wait” program in Malawi, Kenya, and Nigeria, and have developed an eight-year educational curriculum that supports a Biblical world view.

“Your world view determines your values, which determines your behavior,” Day notes. “We’re engaged in ideological warfare,” he says. “Are we evolving animals? Or is there a God-given dignity that can be expressed in our sexuality?”

The implementation of Day’s educational curriculum in these countries faces some obstacles. “IF we can keep kids in school we have 10 years to build a biblical world view,” he says. In Malawi, the government introduced free education in 1999, and the number of students doubled, overwhelming the school system. “There are typically 120 kids in a class,” he notes. “Only 32 percent reach grade five and two-thirds will drop out.”

Because Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world, many of the children who drop out will become street vendors.

Day says that only finances will slow his efforts to implement “Why Wait” in Africa. “We’re praying a major organization will take us over because we don’t have the infrastructure,” he says.

“We are 20 years in to the pandemic,” Day notes. “It will probably not peak until 2050 or 2060, and even when it peaks there will be fallout for 20 years,” he predicts. “We must give young people sensible reasons to abstain from premarital sex, and educate the youth of Africa in God’s principles of moral development.”