A couple of articles and utterances have recently appeared in the Botswana press implying that the resilience of the epidemic in Botswana has been a result of over-reliance on condoms. As is typical with such utterances, some people quote the Ugandan experience, and characteristically claim that unlike the situation in Botswana, abstinence was the main thrust of the Ugandan situation. I would not wholly agree with this position, rather I would posit that the Ugandan approach was more comprehensive because of the robust response of civil society and the population in general, and the use of all types of interventions, including condoms.
In actual fact, the ABC message that became the hallmark of the Botswana approach, was conceived and developed in Uganda. We all know what the letters stand for. Granted Uganda was a pioneer in AIDS control, but remember it had one of the earliest epidemics in the continent. In the middle 1980's the country suddenly realized that its people were dying and villages' social structures were collapsing. The elite in the towns, the ones running the country, were also dying in large numbers. I understand this is what prompted President Museveni, who had just taken over the country after a civil war, to mount the response that has now become famous.
