NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – US President George W Bush’s administration’s international AIDS policies have worsened a condom shortage in Uganda and could lead to an increase in the East African country’s HIV infection rate, a top UN envoy said yesterday.

Stephen Lewis, the UN Secretary General’s special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, said US cuts in funding for condoms and a new emphasis on promoting abstinence had contributed to a condom shortage in Uganda, one of the few countries which had previously succeeded in reducing its HIV rate.

“There is no doubt in my mind that the condom crisis in Uganda is being driven by (US programmes),” Lewis said in a teleconference sponsored by health and human rights groups. “To impose a dogma driven policy that is fundamentally flawed is doing damage to Africa.”

A shortage of condoms in Uganda has developed because both the government and its primary donor for HIV prevention, the United States, have allowed condom supplies to dwindle while allocating an increasing proportion of funding for HIV programmes to religious groups that oppose condom use, said a report by the Center for Health and Gender Equity.

The group said that while Uganda needs between 120 million and 150 million condoms a year, only 32 million have been distributed since October.

Ugandan officials have denied that there is a problem or a deviation in policy.

“It is not true that there is a condom shortage,” Health Minister Jim Muhwezi. “There seems to be a coordinated smear campaign by those who do not want to use any other alternative simultaneously with condoms against AIDS.”

Muhwezi said he was coordinating Uganda’s HIV prevention strategy with the U.S. government, but insisted that condoms remain an important part of their HIV prevention strategy. He said the recent discovery of problems with the quality of condoms imported into Uganda had led to a disruption in supply, but that the problem was sorted out.