By Elizabeth Kameo
You would think that after 25 years of the world living with the challenge of 
HIV/AIDS, statistics would be showing success. However after listening to Dr Alex Coutinho, Director, Infectious Diseases Institute, Makarere University, I realized that they are still scary.
Dr Coutinho who has been working in the HIV/AIDS field since 1983 got me thinking about these statistics when he spoke during the Workshop on HIV/Prevention Education as a Tool for Social Transformation. This is at the ongoing Commonwealth People’s Forum in Uganda.
“The statistics are glaring and yet there is a substantial increase in HIV/AIDS funding in the world,” says Dr Coutinho. “Twenty years of working in the HIV/AIDS sector and I still wake up miserable.”
And it is easy to understand why he would wake up miserable. Take an example of Uganda. Even after the breakthrough of the Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT), 20% to 30% of infected mothers still give birth to infected children. Yet in South Africa, PMTCT is proving to be a success, 30% of mothers access comprehensive prevention care and are having healthy children.
I managed to get a short audio segment from Dr Coutinho at the workshop:
Download a low bandwidth file here or press play below:
A transcript will go up shortly.
Why is this not happening in a country like Uganda where HIV/AIDS prevention has been at the forefront even with the political leaders? Have we relaxed or do we think that having an infection rate of about 7% is all the success Uganda needs?
The truth is that progress on prevention is still miserable and yet today everyone seems to be focusing on a vaccine rather than using knowledge gained to come up with prevention education messages that will work. Dr Coutinho asks: “why are we clamoring for a vaccine instead of calling for innovative preventive messages?”
So why not let the two examples of statistics do the talking?
- The progress on prevention is still miserable. Only 9% of people in Uganda have access to condoms.
- Only 11% of infected mothers have access to PMTCT.
I am amazed at the new developments in HIV/AIDS prevalence rates in Uganda as reflected in Dr. Coutino’s report. If it is true that only 9% of the people in Uganda have access to condoms and 11% of infected mothers have access to PMTCT, then I strongly agree with him that prevention would be the best option as we look for a soultion in terms of a vaccine.
It is therefore imperative that Ugandan authorities put thrust on condom use as education and sensitisation also intensifies.
My only concern was whether the low HIV/AIDS prevalence rates recorded earlier in Uganda were not based on the fact that few people had undertaken an HIV/AIDS test as opposed to today and possibly the rate could have been underestimated.
Nonetheless, we need to improve on delivery of ARVs to those who are infcted and also improve on the monitoring and distribution of the drugs to ensure that they are used effectively.
To the commonwealth countries, this is an area which we should lay much emphasis. There is the right to life to those who are (HIV/AIDS) infected on one hand. There is also the right for others who are not yet infected to also live HIV/AIDS free lives.
The key questions to address are:
Are corporates in order when they discriminate would- be employees on the basis of their sero status?
What happpens if an employee is infected while working? Does he/she automatically gets sacked and replaced? What would happen to the profitability and productivity of entitities? What about life insurance policies?
These are questions which the forum should be able to address.