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Misguided Commitment to Abstinence-Until Marriage |
Arbitrary prevention spending guidelines set in Washington D.C. rather than by the people implementing programs stand in the way of providing every individual with the full range of services and education needed to protect him or herself against HIV. While Congress did remove the original requirement that one third of prevention funding be spent on abstinence-until-marriage programs, the new reporting requirement continues to emphasize the ineffective abstinence-until-marriage and being faithful programs, rather than ensuring that individuals receive information and services on all the ways that HIV infection can be prevented. This provision will create pressure on programs to meet arbitrary limits that are not driven by epidemiology or the reality of people’s lives, wasting scarce public resources.
Furthermore, Congress simply ignored the evidence they themselves requested. The original 2003 law called on the nonpartisan Institutes of Medicine to review and make recommendations about PEPFAR programs. The Institute of Medicine report mandated by the 2003 legislation found that "by requiring the Country Teams to isolate funding for these activities, this budget allocation has undermined the teams' ability to integrate prevention programming." The Government Accountability Office review included similar recommendations; yet, both sets of recommendations were wholly ignored.
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