NEW YORK, NY – A short film that demonstrates, in stark and powerful detail, the grave consequences of the United States’ abstinence-only approach to HIV prevention was screened at Tribeca Cinemas here this evening.  Actress Gloria Reuben, who played an HIV-positive health worker on the acclaimed television show “ER” joined leaders from Population Action International; amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research; International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC); Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS); and other leading health organizations for the screening and a panel discussion that followed. 

Filmed in Kenya and Uganda, Abstaining from Reality: U.S. Restrictions on HIV Prevention features educators, an HIV-positive priest, and a young Kenyan woman, Juliet Awuor, who contracted HIV/AIDS and became pregnant because she and her boyfriend did not know the proper way to use condoms.  Awuor’s baby subsequently contracted the disease and died.

Abstaining from Reality notes that PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) pledges $15 billion over five years to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS in 15 countries where infection rates are high, but this unprecedented U.S. effort has a major flaw: It mandates an abstinence-only approach as the lead HIV prevention strategy.  A new evaluation conducted for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) confirms that abstinence-only sexuality education programs, which provide no information on contraception, do not work.

Each day, some 16,000 people around the world become infected with HIV, most through unprotected sex.  “If we are serious about stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS, we simply must end the ideological restrictions that are putting millions at risk and undermining much of the good work the U.S. is trying to do around the world,” said Population Action International President/CEO Amy Coen.  “The new HHS study confirms that we are exporting a program that simply doesn’t work.  To continue this would be dangerous and unethical.  Congress should refuse to impose these dangerous restrictions on international family planning when it reauthorizes PEPFAR this year.

The discussion that followed the screening featured Rosemarie Muganda-Onyando, a sexual and reproductive health expert based in Nairobi who says in the film, “To strictly say abstinence only is like walking into a hospital ward and having all these patients with different ailments and saying, ‘Okay, this is a prescription, it is the same prescription for all of you.’” 

The documentary has been screened on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. earlier this week before a bipartisan group of Members of Congress.  It has been screened before parliaments in several European countries and will shortly be shown in San Francisco and Ottawa. 

The film includes a Guide for Action that shows people how to take a stand against policies that withhold vital information about condom use and other forms of prevention, and in support of more responsible policies. 

Abstaining from Reality: U.S. Restrictions on HIV Prevention was written and directed by Daniele Anastasion and edited by Kris Kral for Population Action International.  More information about the nine-minute documentary is available at http://www.populationaction.org/Publications/Documentaries/Abstaining_from_Reality_-_U.S._Restrictions_on_HIV_Prevention.shtml.