Nairobi — Uganda is the only country in Africa with a positive increase in its life expectancy

Uganda's success in reducing HIV infection rates is being highlighted by members of President George Bush's team in their push for sexual abstinence on the part of teenagers in the US.

A senior official in the US government's health-services agency praised Uganda's approach to fighting Aids in comments broadcast last week by US National Public Radio.

Uganda, said Deputy Secretary Claude Allen, was "The only country in Africa that has had a positive increase in its life expectancy, and that's because they focused on young people remaining abstinent until they were married."

Allen's claim echoed earlier remarks by the head of the leading medical agency in the US.

Dr Julie Gerberding, director of the Centres for Disease Control, said in her inaugural speech last year that Uganda's "comprehensive programme includes strong emphasis on abstinence, marital fidelity and responsible sexual behaviour. Abstinence and monogamy are the first line of defence against HIV/Aids."

Emboldened by Republican gains in the recent congressional elections, the party's powerful religious right wing is intensifying its efforts to shift the focus of anti-Aids education away from encouraging condom use and toward advocating virginity among teenagers and marital fidelity among adults.

American conservatives' increasingly open opposition to promotion of condoms has also begun to influence US policy in the developing world.

The Bush team is already withholding funding for the UN Population Fund, which distributes millions of condoms in sub-Saharan Africa and other regions.

And right-wing groups are now pushing to end US support for international anti-Aids organisations that put greater emphasis on condom use among young people, than on urging sexual abstinence until marriage.

The number of condoms distributed in the developing world by US aid agencies has decreased sharply since 1990. Some 360 million were given away in 2000, compared with 800 million a decade earlier.

Feminists and left-wing pressure groups in the US are charging that heavy reliance on abstinence advocacy will prove not only ineffective but irresponsible.

These activists argue that millions of sexually active young people in developing countries and in the US will ignore the abstinence appeals but will lack access to contraception and to methods of preventing HIV/Aids transmission.

According to American conservatives, Uganda's encouragement of abstinence has been the primary factor in lowering its HIV infection rate from 30 per cent to 5 per cent within a decade. Those on the other side of the debate acknowledge that abstinence has played a part in Uganda's achievement, but they point out that condoms are widely used in the country and have likely contributed significantly to the declining prevalence of HIV infections.

Sophia Mukaso Monico, a former director of Africa's largest Aids service organisation, said on National Public Radio that Uganda's ABC campaign (Abstain, Be faithful, or wear a Condom) does urge young people to forgo sex.

"According to our culture, we all promote virginity until you get married," Ms Monico said. She added, though, that abstinence is interpreted in Uganda as meaning that teenagers should postpone their initial sexual experience for one year and should then limit their number of sexual partners.

A recent study by a Harvard University anthropologist Edward Green suggests that Uganda's abstinence campaign probably has had a major impact on HIV infection rates. His study found that the average Ugandan girl becomes sexually active at the age of 17 - about one year later than was the case a decade ago. And the rate of marriage among Ugandan girls aged 15 to 19 is 76 per cent, compared with 37 per cent in Kenya.

Despite the growing conservative opposition to all condom-promotion policies, the US Agency for International Development continues to distribute condoms in at least some countries. Four months ago, USAid announced it would provide Tanzania with 6.8 million condoms to alleviate a shortage. "Ensuring a consistent supply of condoms is a top priority of all stakeholders working in family planning and HIV/Aids prevention," USAID's director for Tanzania, James Kirkland, said at the time.

And just last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell said at a press conference that USAID has more than doubled its purchases of condoms in order "to try to prevent the transmission of the disease."