NGO disagrees with release of AIDS prisoners

Uganda has been releasing prisoners in the advanced stages of AIDS infection because the state is unable to care for them.

Inter Press Service quoted Commissioner of Prisons Jethro Mumbuwa as saying: "The prisons are under-resourced both financially and in human resources ... we think that when people are terminally ill they are better off spending their last days with their families."

Chairman of the Network of Zambian People Living with HIV/AIDS (NZP+), Clement Mfuzi, said: "You just do not unleash people with HIV onto an unsuspecting public. What if the convicts themselves are in denial and continue to have unprotected sex with their spouses?"

More than 300 prison inmates have been released since late 2001 and Mfuzi believes the government is entrenching the stigma surrounding HIV-positive people by washing its hands of prisoners with AIDS-related illnesses.