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GAO Criticizes Bush's AIDS Plan
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Several activist organizations said the GAO findings confirm their suspicions.
The abstinence policy "is basically unworkable," said Paul Zeitz, director of the Global AIDS Alliance. "This shows the problem very clearly and starkly."
But the AIDS coordinator's office, which is in the State Department, has shown considerable flexibility in administering the rules.
In June 2004, it notified Congress that it would broaden the definition of "abstinence until marriage" to include programs that also encouraged fidelity in sexual relationships outside marriage.
The office also exempts some countries' programs from meeting the abstinence-spending target as long as the entire overseas AIDS-prevention budget meets it. Ten of the 20 countries surveyed got exemptions.
Mark Dybul, a physician who is the medical director of the Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, said condom promotion -- the C in ABC -- has suffered no reduction under the Bush plan.
"What we have done is come into a balance with ABC," he said.
He said the program cutbacks described in the GAO anecdotes would not have been necessary if the administration had received all the overseas AIDS funding it sought -- $527 million more over the last three budgets.
