From Rita Curley: an open letter.

Dear Prime Minister,

It was very disappointing to read that Canada is contributing $100 million of taxpayers' money to the World Health Organization to help in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

Many years ago, Pope John Paul II, the most respected man in the world, (and our Canadian bishops agreed) taught that "only a change of behaviour will stem the tide of AIDS."

Didn't I read somewhere that you are Catholic, and you have attended Notre Dame Basilica, Ottawa?

The Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace, CCODP, issued a press release, December 18, 2003, that its HIV/AIDS policy follows Catholic moral principles and will not fund programs designed to distribute condoms, nor fund programs which involve condom distribution, but will include information in marital fidelity and abstinence.

In Uganda, which once had the highest rate of AIDS in the world, the infection rate dropped from 30% of the population in the early 1990% to around 10% today--which experts are saying is proof that marital fidelity and abstinence work.

Dorathy Kevenze, an HIV/AIDS activist in neighbouring Kenya, says, "Abstinence worked well for Uganda, and can work well for other African countries."

According to a study by development expert Raud Stoneburner, Uganda's prevention model, used elsewhere, has the potential to reduce the AIDS rate in Africa's worst-stricken countries by 80%. Stoneburner, a former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and World Health Organization (WHO) epidemiologist, says that this is the same level of efficiency one might expect from an HIV/AIDS vaccine.

Uganda boasts the most successful HIV/AIDS prevention case in Africa, the only country in sub-Sahara Africa where HIV/AIDS has decreased substantially.

Credit is partly attributed to President Yoweri Museveni who came to power in 1986, restored political stability, and led an aggressive anti-AIDS campaign by encouraging HIV testing, abstinence and the use of condoms. His government invested heavily in training health workers, created counseling networks and treating sexually-transmitted diseases.

Dr. Vinaud Nantulya, an infectuous disease specialist who helped advise Museveni, says Ugandans "really never took to condoms." The message that took hold was that young people, who are at higher risk of being infected, should not have sex until marriage and then remain faithful. By 2001, the number of pregnant Ugandan women testing positive for HIV had fallen from 21.2% at the height of the epidemic in 1991 to 6.2%.

In Ottawa, at one time in the 1960's, Dr. Allou Doane, chief of the Special Treatment Clinic at Ottawa Civic Hospital, cleared up all the cases of syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia, in the area. The clinic was closed, and hospitals were able to discontinue taking blood Kasserman tests on each and every one patient admitted. But now we have more than 40 sexually-transmitted diseases--all across our country, caused by promiscuity and that "lifestyle."

AIDS is caused by a virus, but the epidemic is caused by promiscuity. We cannot condone it by concentrating on "safe sex" which only promotes promiscuity--casual sex. Consider the cost for health care!

Truly, only a change of behaviour will stem the tide of AIDS. Please make sure that W.H.O. does not squander our money promoting promiscuity.

Trusting to hear from you at your earliest convenience, I am. etc.

Ottawa, ON