Museveni remark concerns AIDS activists

Activists in the battle against HIV/AIDS have expressed concern and anger at remarks made by President Yoweri Museveni in the recent presidential election campaign that people should not vote for Kizza Besigye, his leading opponent, because he carried the HIV virus. Museveni, who won the election with almost 70 percent of the valid vote, made the comments towards the end of a campaign in which Besigye appeared to be offering a significant challenge. NGOs said the statement reinforced the stigma and discrimination faced by Ugandans living with HIV and AIDS, and appeared to contradict what Museveni had previously stood for in encouraging openness and HIV/AIDS awareness in an effort to combat the disease, Inter Press Service reported on Tuesday. “It may not have impacted on the vote because Ugandans have lost the stigma but the comments were totally against the anti-HIV spirit,” it quoted Reverend Grace Kaiso, head of Uganda’s Joint Christian Council, as saying. Besigye, formerly personal physician to President Museveni, has neither confirmed nor denied his alleged HIV-positive status.

Meanwhile, the Uganda National Farmers’ Association (UNFA) has called for the government to establish a fund to make HIV/AIDS drugs more readily available to farmers, the semi-official ‘New Vision’ newspaper reported on Tuesday. “Some of our colleagues in the service sector are being helped to meet the costs of the expensive drugs. We would also like the government to establish a fund to subsidise the costs for farmers,” the paper quoted UNFA president Chebet Maikut as saying. The Ugandan authorities should also strengthen measures to ban beef imports from the European Union (EU) in light of the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease there, in order to protect the livestock industry, Maikut added.