By Mulengera Reporters
The Uganda Country Director for UNAIDS (the UN Agency concerned with HIV/Aids) has disclosed why every Ugandan should become very afraid about the resurgent HIV Aids scourge. Ms Kawesa Kirabo says whereas all the attention has shifted to non-communicable diseases (against the President even led a match last weekend), HIV/Aids has continued to silently rampage and causing more damage than any other medical condition.
“HIV is a silent epidemic in Uganda. It might be silent but its still active out there actually more active than ever before,” Kawesa told a high level gathering of development partners, private sector and GoU representatives during a meeting on Thursday.
This was at Serena Hotel where National Planning Authority (NPA) organized a breakfast meeting to solicit views on what the country’s NDP III (specifically human capital development aspects) should look like. The idea was for the stakeholders to give NPA views specifically regarding what must be done to improve the human capital development situation in the country. There is concern that Ugandan schooling graduates at all levels have continued to be inadequately skilled and therefore unemployable despite mass investment into the skilling programs by the GoU.
The human capital development discussion covered both educational and health needs of the population. And its in this context that the UNAIDS boss, who has always been quietly grumbling, grabbed the opportunity to make her case about HIV which she says no longer gets the adequate attention it deserves from government.
She explained there is reason to be worried because every week 1,000 Ugandans get infected with HIV/Aids adding onto the 1.4m who are already infected. She says because whoever is eligible can these days access treatment to contain the virus, people have adjusted and learnt to comfortably live with HIV. And such people can’t easily be detected or identified because it doesn’t show on them anymore. She says this (deceptive) comfort is the reason no one in government seems alarmed about the HIV situation anymore.
Kawesa provoked the audience to think about it differently. “98% of the expenses to meet the treatment of those already sick is being met by donors leaving GoU to cover only 2%. The danger is this isn’t sustainable because donors have already indicated desire to pull out. What happens the day they pull out and you have so many people supposed to be maintained on this life-long treatment?” She challenged NPA to use the NDP III thinking process to galvanize the public into advocacy aimed at pushing government to begin preparing to 100% fund the provision of health services to its people.
Other speakers, mostly from the development partner fraternity, supported her claiming several donor agencies have already indicated to the GoU their plans to massively scale down their commitments and financial support to the health sector where the government is almost absent beyond providing physical infrastructure and remunerating health workers. Consensus at the meeting was that NPA must become more outspoken against government reluctance to adequately finance the provision of health services, leaving much of the burden on the donors.
The UNAIDS boss emphasized that 1,000 new infections per week is too much and is largely because of the government reluctancy on intensifying the awareness messages. “What happened to the HIV education programs in schools? There is no way the situation is going to be reversed unless HIV education gets institutionalized. Can you imagine school children are being deprived of this information and they don’t know much about HIV anymore,” she argued adding “there must be continuous awareness creation at the work place, at home and school.”
She went on: “Let nobody lie to you HIV is still there and its just silent and the best is to prevent more people from getting infected because treatment is expensive for many people and its treatment for the lifetime. It’s permanent treatment.” She expressed fear that the day things explode and get out of control, a significant fraction of the population could be wiped out causing serious devastation as was the case in the late 1980s. (For comments, call, text or whatsapp us on 0703164755 or email us at mulengera2040@gmail.com).
