Sexual abstinence
and Aids

 
In the middle of March, for six days, the Pope Benedict XVI has visited Africa, the continent with the largest number of people infected with Aids in the world. Since the 80’s, the disease has already killed more than 25 million of Africans.

As it was expected, the Catholic leader has reinforced out there the Church’s position against the use of preservatives. Aids, the Pope said, “cannot be defeated with the distribution of preservatives”. “The solution comes from a spiritual renovation which brings a new behavior.”

The sexual abstinence proposal is not newness on the public declarations of the Church leadership and was even adopted by some African governments, such as Kenya, in the middle of 2001.

With 2.2 million of people infected with HIV at that point, Kenya was going through a difficult situation and a solution to stop the epidemic was unknown. The problem was so extreme that the Kenyan president decided to ask the population to abstain from sexual relations during two years so that the Aids spread could be stopped.

As the authorities were aware the appeal would hardly be taken seriously, they also decided to import 300 millions of preservatives, a measure very criticized by religious leaders in the country, Catholics and Muslims. According to their viewpoint, the government should promote the sexual abstinence more intensely and not the distribution of preservatives, which could end up benefiting adultery and prostitution, in addition to encourage young people to have sex prematurely.

The question has already been discussed many times in Brazil. The Church understands, founded on the studies by Malcolm Potts, HIV specialist, that no preservative is able to prevent the virus passage. According to information from Potts, the preservatives distributed by the Public Heath Service is found to have pore sizes up to 5 microns, fifty times larger than the HIV virus, which is 0.1 micron.

Given these numbers, to recommend the use of preservative to an individual who does not care about moderating his sexual relations is equivalent to trust the car to a drunk driver and ask him to use a safety belt.

Years have passed and, as we know, the situation in Africa is still very sad and certainly will demand sacrifices beyond the measures taken so far.

Can the spiritual protectors, who have helped the mankind so much, do anything for the Africans? We hope so, although we know that the direct responsibility regarding the sexual subject belongs to the incarnated ones. Moderation, fidelity and respect to others: these are factors that cannot miss concerning this theme so important in the world we live in.