World Bank to pay Africans to have safe sex

[Texpat]

Is this a prudent expenditure of World Bank funds? I think it's ridiculous, irresponsible and must have the fcuking Africans rolling on the floor with laughter. There are some extremely dim people in this world. (emphasis mine)

***

By Andrew Jack
Financial Times
April 25, 2008

Thousands of people in Africa will be paid to avoid unsafe sex, under a groundbreaking World Bank-backed experiment aimed at halting the spread of Aids.
The $1.8m trial – to be launched this year – will counsel 3,000 men and women aged 15-30 in southern rural Tanzania over three years, paying them on condition that periodic laboratory test results prove they have not contracted sexually transmitted infections.

The proposed payments of $45 equate to a quarter of annual income for some participants.

The programme, jointly funded by the World Bank, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Population Reference Bureau and the Spanish Impact Evaluation Fund, marks an important step in the fight to tackle Aids, which claims 2m lives a year.

In spite of billions of dollars spent annually on treatment and prevention worldwide, there were about 2.5m new HIV infections in 2007, predominantly in Africa.

Carol Medlin from the University of California, San Francisco, one of the researchers, said: “We hope this ‘reverse prostitution’ will make people think hard about the long-term consequences of their short-term behaviour.”

The Tanzanian experiment is a big advance in efforts to test public health ideas more rigorously, with some participants placed in a control arm not offered payment in order to track the effects of the programme precisely.

“Conditional cash transfers” have already been used in Latin America to motivate poor parents to attend health clinics, and have their children vaccinated and schooled. Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, last year unveiled a project to boost school attendance.

The designers of the Tanzanian programme believe that payments of $45 when combined with careful counselling could play an important role in reducing HIV infection, especially for vulnerable young women.

The study will be conducted by the Ifakara Health Research and Development Centre in Tanzania, in conjunction with researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, the University of California, San Francisco and the World Bank.

The Tanzanian trial programme, which is still subject to fine-tuning and ethical approval, will not specifically test for HIV, which is costly and already widely conducted in the country. It will use proxies including gonorrhoea, and guarantees any participant found to be infected receives state treatment.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c391a1ce-12ee-11dd-8d91-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

[daveboy]

Unbelievable

[Spin]

believable but unworkable.

[BrucefarmerFANG]

No wonder Jesus wept ,these organisers are paying their mortgages and bar bills to tell you what ? ,paid by who ?

[blackgang]

In Africa they pay em to use a condom, in the USA they pay em for each kid they have, illegitimate or not, a monthly welfare check as a reward for having more kids.


Unfuckinbelievable..

[kingwilly]

ｕｎｒｅａｌ．　ｉ　ｄｏｎｔ　ｓｅｅ　ｈｏｗ　ｉｔ　ｗｉｌｌ　ｂｅ　ａｌｌ　ｔｈａｔ　ｗｏｒｋａｂｌ ｅ．

[barbaro]

Good article and OP, Texpat.

Rolling on the floor, laughing.

This is one of the dumbest things I've heard about all year.

[paulsmithson]

yeah it would be funny if it was not so pathetic.

[Rawaii]

Hm, which country in africa would be good for live there?
Are they paying expats too?