New AIDS survey to launch in June

Uganda will spend US $2.7 million on its upcoming national HIV sero-behavioural survey, the project director in the Ministry of Health, Dr Alex Opio, has said. The new survey is expected to deliver information obtained from individual questionnaires as well as blood sample collection from eligible respondents. "We are starting on 20 June in Kampala, Tororo, Masindi and Lira districts and then move to other parts of the country ... Blood will be collected from adults between 15 to 59 years and children between 0 to 59 months," local newspaper, The Monitor, quoted Opio as saying. Although Uganda boasts the success of bringing its infection rate down from more than 30 percent in the early 1990s to around 6 percent in 2003, the current estimates are based primarily on the extrapolation of figures from tests conducted at antenatal clinics.