Your Tax Dollars at Work

From Wednesday's Toronto Star (emphasis mine):

Kenyan Girl Guides help battle disease

Girl Guides in Kenya are earning merit badges for promoting abstinence programs to their female compatriots as part of a U.S.-funded strategy for AIDS prevention, reporters were told at a news conference yesterday. "We enhance abstinence among the youth in schools and also in the community," 18-year-old Girl Guide Ranger Millicent Achieng explained from Nairobi during a video conference at the U.S. consulate in Toronto. The guides program has given out abstinence-promotion badges to 2,000 girls who learned they should abstain from sex until marriage and be faithful to their husbands after. The program will receive $200,000 (U.S.) this year from U.S. President George W. Bush's five-year, $15 billion President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, also known as PEPFAR."

Sounds great. Except...

From Wednesday's Toronto Star (emphasis mine):

Kenyan Girl Guides help battle disease

Girl Guides in Kenya are earning merit badges for promoting abstinence programs to their female compatriots as part of a U.S.-funded strategy for AIDS prevention, reporters were told at a news conference yesterday. "We enhance abstinence among the youth in schools and also in the community," 18-year-old Girl Guide Ranger Millicent Achieng explained from Nairobi during a video conference at the U.S. consulate in Toronto. The guides program has given out abstinence-promotion badges to 2,000 girls who learned they should abstain from sex until marriage and be faithful to their husbands after. The program will receive $200,000 (U.S.) this year from U.S. President George W. Bush's five-year, $15 billion President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, also known as PEPFAR."

Sounds great. Except…

Marriage an AIDS risk in developing world: Realities of life, not ignorance, cited as obstacle in preventing disease

More than four-fifths of new HIV infections in women result from sex with their husband or primary partners

The majority of sexually active girls aged 15-19 in developing countries are married, and these married adolescent girls tend to have higher rates of HIV infection than their sexually active, unmarried peers

Figure it out, guys. It's not that complicated.