Uganda: AIDS body chief roots for gays

By Raymond Baguma
THE gay community in the country should not be neglected while designing anti-HIV/AIDS strategies, the director general of the Uganda AIDS Commission, Dr. Kihumuro Apuuli, has said.

“It is true that research was done among gays and the trend is common in young people. We need to address the gay issue, but they are not a major driver of infections.”

Apuuli was on Monday addressing journalists at the Media Centre in Kampala ahead of the start of the Global HIV/AIDS implementers’ meeting. He noted that in Uganda, the major drivers of the pandemic were the fishing communities, sex workers, truck drivers and the armed forces.

Apuuli added that discordance and extra-marital relationships were playing a big role in the spread. A recent study in Kampala showed gay and bi-sexual men had unprotected sex with their partners yet the perception that they were at risk of HIV infection was low.

The study called for the urgent recognition that these people needed to be sensitised on the mode of infection and given treatment. The upcoming HIV/AIDS national sero-behavioral status survey due in September would help to establish the updated prevalence rates of the epidemic in the country, Apuuli noted.

The last survey put the national prevalence at 6.4%. A small percentage of people, Apuuli stated, knew their sero-status. He observed that the infection rate among the youth had fallen because of an effective campaign to promote abstinence through the Young Empowered And Healthy (YEAH) programme.

The chief medical officer of the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, Dr. Thomas Kenyon, said the highest rate of infections and deaths globally occurred in Africa yet most people did not know their sero-status.

He noted that the emergency plan had enabled 1.5 million people worldwide to access ARV treatment and supported interventions in children by introducing special testing equipment for babies.

This article was published in The New Vision Wednesday June 4th 2008