US not harming Aids fight
2005-08-30 21:15
Kampala - The Ugandan government on Tuesday denied reports that United States-backed abstinence programmes were undermining Uganda's safe sex-oriented campaign against HIV/Aids, so far held up as an ideal example for other African nations to follow.
Deputy minister for health Mike Mukula said: "The government has been emphasising the use of condoms and abstinence at the same time."
Mukula was reacting to comments by the United Nations secretary general's special envoy on HIV/Aids, Stephen Lewis, who said the US was harming Uganda's fight against the disease by insisting on abstinence-led campaigns and downplaying condom usage.
However, leading Ugandan HIV/Aids activist Beatrice Were agreed with Lewis, saying abstinence programmes were not compatible public health realities.
Kids used as sex slaves
She said: "It completely ignores that young girls, for example in Northern Uganda, do not have the choice to abstain from gang rape."
Uganda's highest prevalence of HIV/Aids was in the conflict-ridden north of the country, where the Lords Resistance Army had abducted thousands of children to use as sex slaves and soldiers.
The UN envoy's comments came barely a week after the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria suspended funding to Uganda after "evidence of serious mismanagement".
Uganda had won international praise for its aggressive campaign against HIV/Aids, managing to cut infection rates from more than 20% in the 1980s to its current seven percent.
However, the government had recently faced increasing criticism for a perceived policy shift in favour of the abstinence approach and away from the use of condoms.
- SAPA