Home  News Archive  News from HealthServe: Impact of Religious Organisations on HIV and AIDS Prevention

Related pages:

News Archive

Publications

About HealthServe

March 2002
Impact of Religious Organisations on HIV and AIDS Prevention
For some years there has been debate, and sometimes conflict between Christian and secular agencies in the West and the developing world over HIV prevention strategies. Secular agencies have tended to see sexual behaviour change as impractical or inappropriate, and have majored on condoms as a means of harm reduction. Christians and other religious groups meanwhile, have tended to focus on behaviour change - in particular a focus on marital fidelity/monogamy, sexual abstinence/delaying the age of first sexual experience, etc.

A recent piece of research suggests that the impact of religious organisations (especially Christian) in promoting behaviour change is making a measurable impact on the rates of HIV transmission in developing nations.

Dr. E.C Green of the Harvard School of Public health has shown that in both Uganda and Jamaica, HIV infection rates have measurably reduced in recent years, and a significant part of that impact has been due to sexual behaviour change educational programmes, most of which have been initiated by Christian organisations. The full text of this paper can be accessed on-line at www.ccih.org(under "Forum #11"), and Dr Green can be contacted at egreendc@aol.com. Hard copies of the paper can be obtained from the MMA HealthServe office.