JESUIT Father Michael Kelly, who is on a committee preparing a national HIV/AIDS draft strategy, has contradicted claims that Health Minister Tony Abbott’s moral views are unduly influencing the strategy.
The Age newspaper in Melbourne reported on February 28 that Government sexual health advisers were unhappy that Health Department bureaucrats changed the draft strategy, written by an HIV/AIDS advisory committee, to include recommendations on teenage sexual abstinence.
The newspaper quoted one source suggesting department officials appeared to have changed the draft to reflect views that Mr Abbott would want, and another source claiming Mr Abbott’s office had intervened directly.
A spokeswoman for Mr Abbott said the strategy would ‘cover a range of measures including education and different types of behaviour, but it is really a matter for the committee to consider and prepare’.
Fr Kelly said he had not read all the documentation of the draft because there was still two weeks before the committee’s next meeting.
Seeking to put the committee’s work in perspective, Fr Kelly said there has been relative neglect in Australia of other sexually transmitted infections besides HIV/AIDS, diseases such as hepatitis C among drug users and chlamydia, which can cause infertility in women.
