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'Family Planning' Groups Spreading AIDS in Africa with Depo Provera, New Study Warns

From 1994-2000, USAID provided 41,967,200 units of Depo Provera into developing world

NEW YORK, September 8, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - With its insistence on the use of injected contraceptives, health organizations pushing Depo Provera have been spreading AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases in the developing world. A new study by the National Institutes of Health, University of North Carolina and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore have found that the use of injected hormonal contraceptives increases the risk of STD's. Charles Morrison of Family Health International in Research Triangle Park, N.C., who led the study, said that it is possible that the drug itself actually increases susceptibility to disease. The study says that the use of such drugs can increase the risk of STD's as much as three-fold.

The Population Research Institute in their Weekly Briefing mailout, said this is not news to people lobbying against the widespread use of artificial contraceptives in the developing world. They point to a 1996 study that found an elevated HIV infection rate among monkeys who were given subdermal progesterone implants. They warn that the so-called 'family planning' programmes pushed in the third world by organizations such as the World Health Organization and UNFPA, are in fact engaged in spreading sexually transmitted diseases including the deadly AIDS virus.

From 1994-2000, USAID provided 41,967,200 units of Depo Provera into the developing world, at a cost of over US $40 million. Even the Reuters newswire story included a sober note on the implications for foreign depopulation programmes in Africa. Pro-life lobbyists and countries with strong pro-life ethics have long complained of the coercive nature of UN-distributed foreign aid, saying that it is invariably linked to the use of contraceptives and abortion. The new research suggests that the strategy of using contraceptives to reduce the rate of STD's has backfired. In the nineties, when it was receiving funding from the Clinton administration, the UNFPA was shipping 20 million doses of Depo Provera a year.

Depo Provera is a major component of foreign-funded family planning programs in Africa. USAID sends more units of Depo Provera to Africa, to countries such as Mozambique, Tanzania and Nigeria, than to any other part of the world.

PRI's President, Steven Mosher said, "As the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa rages out of control, we have been recklessly promoting and distributing drugs which make women even more vulnerable to the deadly virus. We have been pouring gasoline on a fire." It remains to be seen what response will be made by the population control agencies at the UN to this new information.

Reuters coverage:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5796331/

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