Uganda: Government Slammed Over Alarming Rates Of HIV Prevalence

By Staff Writer

Uganda government is not doing enough in the fight against HIV, warned UNAIDS country coordinator musa Bungudu, as the country top the charts with the highest percentage of new HIV infections in eastern Africa. 

“We are not doing enough. We are doing a lot, but not enough,” said Bungudu who has coordinated the joint UN programme on HIV/AIDS in Uganda for about 5 years.

A new report released by the UN agency on July 16 indicates Uganda in third position among the top 15 countries that accounted for more the than 75% of the 2.1 million new HIV infections that occurred last year.

South Africa tops the global list accounting for 16% new infections in the world, followed by Nigeria 10%, and Uganda with 7%.

Bungudu said Nigeria has a much higher population compared to Uganda’s 35 million people with about 1.6million living with the HIV virus.

“We know how the virus spreads; mainly through unprotected sex and mother to child transmissions. We know that treatment is prevention, if you treat everyone who is HIV infected you reduce their chances of infecting their partners,” he said 

Bugundu said in Uganda, research has shown that men who have sex with men, commercial sex workers, fisher folks and truck drivers.

However, he said despite the findings of the research no serious interventions targeting these groups have taken place.

Africa is the home to HIV virus believed to have originated from Western Equatorial Africa, in Cameroon where groups of central common chimpanzee live and leading in number of deaths followed by Malaria which is spread by Anopheles mosquitoes.