Duration: 4min 39 sec

Transcript

KHOPOTSO: The media is not helping us. All you ever do is over-celebrate Uganda’€™s success story, charged Milly Katana, Advocacy Officer of the Health Rights Action Group in Uganda at the recent biennial International AIDS Conference, held in Bangkok, Thailand.

MILLY KATANA: We have a 6% or higher prevalence rate at the moment. This is like yeast. If you threw one spoon of yeast (into a drum) it will make a whole drum turn into alcohol. This is bad enough. The so-called success story is not correct. And it’€™s making our people go back to their comfort zones of thinking that’€¦ we shall turn the tide around the HIV epidemic.

KHOPOTSO: Dr Lydia Mungherera of the National Forum of People Living with HIV and AIDS also believes that Uganda’€™s so-called ‘€œsuccess story’€ is misleading.

Dr LYDIA MUNGHERERA: I’€™m tired of telling people that we are the champions. Each time I go out to a conference (or) to a meeting I tell people (that) Uganda has made a success headway. I’€™m changing my word(s) now. We have made the way forward, but I’€™m not going to talk about a success story because we still have the highest rates of teenage pregnancies; we still have great domestic violence abuse; we still have young girls who are coerced into marriages because of material things; a lot of people are not on ARV drugs. And I say to myself ‘€˜what’€™s that success?’€™            

KHOPOTSO: If ‘€œsuccess’€ is not the word to describe Uganda’€™s achievements in combating the spread of HIV, in its place comes the term ‘€˜successful headway.’€™ But   what does this mean? Milly Katana explains further.

MILLY KATANA: We mean that we have mounted some actions that have resulted into some tangible benefits. One of the successes is reducing the prevalence rate from 18% to 6%. That’€™s a big break-through. But this is a big enough number to even cause a 100 million infections, if you want, if we do not get out of the complacency that we are setting in thinking that we have achieved’€¦ and so we can sit back and enjoy our lives. We have about one million people who have already succumbed to death as a result of HIV and AIDS; treatment is not being rolled back; issues of prevention; issues of testing are all not where they are supposed to be. So, we have successful headway, but we do not have the real success that can be celebrated because it means something in people’€™s lives.

KHOPOTSO: Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni recently described AIDS as a ‘€˜moral, social and economic problem, which affects people who engage in undisciplined sex.’€™ He attributed Uganda’€™s success to ‘€˜creative communication campaigns that exhorted the youth to abstain from sex and for sexual partners to remain faithful.’€™ He all but removed   condoms from the equation, alarming many Ugandan AIDS activists. They feared that Museveni was making a U-turn in his policies in order to meet the strict conditions set out by the US government for funding approval, which favour AIDS prevention programmes based on ‘€˜abstinence’€™ and ‘€˜faithfulness.’€™ Rev. Canon Gideon Byamugisha is a Commissioner on HIV/AIDS issues in President Museveni’€™s Cabinet.                  

Rev. CANON GIDEON BYAMUGISHA: A person who takes morality seriously will know that abstinence will work; he will know that testing will work; he will know that using condoms when you are HIV negative or you are positive or you are sero-status blind will help; he will know that transfusing blood which is safe is good; he will know that bringing anti-retrovirals to people is good; tackling injustices is good; channelling resources from those who have to those who don’€™t have is good. So, morality is not just ABC. Morality is a whole spectrum of multi-sectoral, multi-level, multi-dimensional response to HIV/AIDS.

KHOPOTSO: Byamugisha advises that a clear mind is needed to continue the struggle against AIDS.

Rev. CANON GIDEON BYAMUGISHA: Being sober, not being too proud of our achievements, so that we are indifferent to new opinions and new ideas ‘€“ that’€™s one way. Two, is to keep the motivation going, knowing that 6% prevalence is not something simple. It means (in) every 100 people you meet six are positive. And that is very big in a population of 24 million. So, being humble enough to know (that) we have not reached; and being focussed’€¦ Having a task-focussed,

results-oriented, inclusive and participatory response can continue giving us the result we want.

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