"Uganda’s success in reducing HIV prevalence and improving reproductive-health status compared with neighbouring countries has been attributed to the selective emphasis on the abstinence and being faithful strands of the ABC strategy in the country’s HIV programmes. The suggestion has been made that later onset of sexual activity and a reduction in non-regular sexual partners (a 65% reduction from 1991 to 1998) have been more important than condom use in curbing the HIV epidemic. These conclusions have been interpreted as providing evidence of the merit of abstinence-based approaches to HIV prevention generally. Several features of Uganda’s epidemiological situation and social-context suggest that Uganda’s success should not be attributed to a few specific interventions. The first feature relates to the timing of events. The fall in prevalence of HIV corresponds to a drop in incidence from the beginning of 1985, when Uganda did not have public national HIV-prevention programmes in place. Furthermore, as our data show, the trend towards older age at first intercourse occurred gradually for women from the 1970s to the present—i.e., before the start of HIV-prevention programmes—for men remarkably little change in age at first intercourse has taken place in recent decades. However, evidence shows that other changes in behaviour have taken place. Condoms were cautiously and gradually introduced in Uganda and were largely unavailable to the general population during the 1980s, but rates of condom use were high in high-risk groups, such as sex workers."