The Collaborative for HIV and AIDS, Religion and Theology (CHART) in the School of Religion and Theology, hosted Reverend JP Mokgethi-Heath, Director of INERELA+, a network of religious leaders living with HIV. He presented an approach to HIV prevention that is more comprehensive than the ABC method - SAVE (Safer practices, Available medicine, Voluntary, confidential testing and counselling, Empowerment and education).
Used in prevention programmes around the world, ABC stands for ‘Abstinence; Be faithful; use Condoms.’ However the way in which it is often presented is more like: ‘Abstain, if you can’t abstain, be faithful, and if you can’t be faithful, use a condom’. The implication that the use of a condom automatically marks a person as unable to be faithful, fuels stigma and acts as a disincentive to evidence-based prevention...