The Legal Janitor

Feb 14, 2006
Learning about contraception not enough for Aids prevention

THE letters ‘Scare-mongering is counter-productive’ by Wong Chen Seong and ‘Educators should not favour any religion’ by Teng Kie Zin (ST, Feb 9) express important reactions towards Family Life Society’s workshops. However, they contain some popular misconceptions about the relationship between contraception and HIV/Aids prevention.

Mr Wong points out that any programme which ignores or condemns ‘what the civilised world has already accepted - condom usage, HIV and Aids sufferers - cannot expect to succeed’.

Actually, some facts suggest otherwise. In March 2004, the medical journal Studies In Family Planning published an article titled ‘Condom Promotion For Aids Prevention In The Developing World: Is It Working?’. It says that high HIV transmission rates have continued despite high rates of condom use in many sub-Saharan African countries.

In fact, the nations with the highest levels of condom availability - like Botswana, Zimbabwe, Kenya and South Africa - continue to have the highest HIV prevalence.

On the other hand, in 2002, the US Agency for International Development (Usaid) published a paper titled ‘How Can Uganda’s Aids Prevention Success Be Explained?’. The report tells us that the national HIV prevalence for Uganda fell from around 15 per cent in 1991 to a mere 5 per cent in 2001. The key reason for the impressive result is the decrease in multiple sexual relationships. Condom promotion was not an important component in the campaign.

To effectively minimise Aids transmission through sexual contact, people need to grasp the importance of having as few sexual partners as possible. Simply teaching them how to use contraception is not the solution.

In an Asian society like Singapore, the best strategy is to teach the young people to abstain from sex before marriage and then to remain faithful to their spouses after marriage. And this is one of the crucial messages being taught to students in the sexuality workshops conducted by the Family Life Society.

Also, in June 2003, the United Nations’ Aids agency (Unaids) published a draft study which said that condoms are actually ineffective in protecting against HIV at an estimated 10 per cent of the time. Given that Aids is a fatal disease, it is safe to say that the one in 10 failure rate of condom protection is simply not good enough. Instead, condoms are liable to give sexually promiscuous people a false sense of security.

This clearly falsifies Mr Teng’s statement that ‘contraception is highly effective against the transmission of STDs and Aids’. He believes that he is being a responsible brother by teaching his sister how to use a condom to protect herself from contracting STDs and HIV/Aids. He might be surprised to find out that this form of protection is actually a form of Russian roulette.