The Ugandan parliament's house Committee on HIV/AIDS and related matters has appealed to the government to increase its funding for HIV, especially as infection rates remain high and the country continues to experience frequent shortages of anti-retroviral medicines. ‘As a committee we are advocating for the government to increase its funding on HIV/AIDS activities in the country to at least 15% [of the national budget],’ said Beatrice Rwakimari, chair of the committee. Uganda's most recent budget allocated about US$30 million to the purchase of anti-retrovirals and anti-malaria medication, and gave the Uganda AIDS Commission about US$3 million to fight HIV, while US$500,000 was earmarked for prevention programmes. The total allocation to HIV programmes – which makes up 6% of the national budget –marks an increase on previous years, but members of Parliament say it is still not nearly enough to roll back the effects of the pandemic. ‘This funding is too little, as we continue to get new infections every year,’ Rwakimari said. Uganda's HIV prevalence has risen marginally from a low of 6% in 2000 to 6.4%, according to the government.
Equity and HIV/AIDS
Ugandan HIV activists have expressed concern over a recommendation by parliament's budget committee that the allocation for antiretroviral (ARV) drugs be cut. The national budget for 2008/09 allocated 76 billion shillings (US$38 million) to purchasing ARVs, the first such allocation in the country's history, but the house standing committee recommended that the amount be cut to 40 billion shillings in the 2009/2010 budget. ‘We recognise that HIV is a serious disease but it is not the only disease affecting Ugandans,’ said Rose Akol Okullo, chair of the committee. ‘Cancer and diseases afflicting women need equal attention if we are to meet the Millennium Development Goal on health. More than 300,000 HIV-positive people in Uganda need ARVs. AIDS activists argue that the committee's recommendation will allow the government to shirk its responsibility to provide drugs to them.
AIDS activists in Uganda have criticised a proposed new law that will force HIV-positive people to reveal their status to their sexual partners, and also allow medical personnel to reveal someone's status to their partner. The HIV Prevention and Control Bill (2008) is intended to provide a legal framework for the national response to HIV, as well as protect the rights of individuals affected by HIV. While activists agree that Uganda needs legislation to guide its HIV policy, they are concerned that the bill in its current form could worsen the difficulties many HIV-positive people experience, such as stigmatisation.
Uganda's HIV and AIDS prevalence rate has risen slightly from 6.4% to 6.7% among adults aged between 15 and 49, according to the government’s recently released national AIDS Indicator Survey. HIV prevalence for women stands at 7.7%, with men at 5.6%. The Ministry of Health argues that the increase is small and is due to HIV-positive children growing up and entering the age bracket of 15 to 19 years old. However, activists are concerned that the lack of progress indicated by the new statistics is the result of gaps in the government's HIV prevention programmes, such as lack of supplies like condoms. They are also becoming increasingly concerned about risk compensation as a result of failing HIV prevention messages, especially since the survey found that just 28.1% of women and 31.4% of men aged between 15 and 19 used a condom during their last sexual encounter, dropping to 6.7% and 12.2% respectively among 30- to 39-year-olds. The full report is due for release in June 2012.
UN humanitarian chief Jan Egeland has called sexual abuse in the Democratic Republic of Congo a cancer "that seems to be out of control". Delivering a report to the UN Security Council, he called on the Congolese authorities to act more firmly to end violence against civilians. Mr Egeland was speaking after visits DR Congo and Uganda last week. He said the situation in northern Uganda was now more promising than it had been in years. However, Mr Egeland said the challenges facing DR Congo were enormous.
The UN has warned that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by governments to curb poverty and promote gender equality by 2015 could fail unless developing countries make HIV/AIDS a priority. A new report, 'Hope: Building Capacity: Least Developed Countries Meet the HIV/AIDS Challenge', said priorities must include the aggressive pursuit of policies that promote women's empowerment and the eradication of AIDS-related discrimination.
More than a dozen Heads of State and Government, over 100 Ministers, as well as more than a thousand representatives of civil society and the private sector gathered at United Nations Headquarters in New York in early June for a major review of international efforts to fight AIDS in what officials at the world body said would be marked by unprecedented
action.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today appointed Elizabeth Mataka, a national of Botswana and a resident of Zambia, as his Special Envoy for AIDS in Africa. Ms. Mataka, a social worker by training, has been working in the field of HIV/AIDS for the past 16 years. She has been involved in many different aspects of responding to the AIDS epidemic, including programmes on HIV prevention, clinical treatment for opportunistic infections, care and support at community and national levels.
International organisations working on AIDS gave their assessment of the worldwide response to the disease, which is increasingly afflicting women and girls. This happened in advance of a UN special session on AIDS that took place on May 31-June 2. Despite the failures so far, there were important lessons that could be learnt.
Since the beginning of the HIV epidemic, governments have prevented people living with HIV from entering or residing in their countries based solely on their HIV status. Such restrictions have stopped HIV positive people from travelling for business, family visits, or tourism; and from entering a country for study, labour migration, and political asylum. Seldom is HIV testing linked to any treatment, heath care, counselling or support, either in country of origin or destination. Nor are the results necessarily kept confidential. Though countries focus on excluding HIV positive migrants, little is done to protect migrants from HIV infection while in destination countries – and indeed some do get infected. There have also been reports of HIV-positive migrants dying for lack of treatment while abroad, including in immigration detention facilities pending deportation. HIV-travel restrictions are anachronisms that are inappropriate in the age of globalisation, increased travel, increased access to treatment for HIV, and national and international commitments to universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support. They are also discriminatory and contribute to stigmatisation. No evidence suggests that HIV-related travel restrictions protect the public health, and they may in fact impede efforts to stop the epidemic. UNAIDS recognizes that States impose immigration and visa restrictions as a valid exercise of their national sovereignty. However, in imposing any restrictions on entry and stay relating to HIV or health, UNAIDS calls upon States to adopt non-discriminatory laws and regulations which rationally achieve valid objectives through the least restrictive means possible.