Anti-AIDS campaigner says government failing people

Experience in Uganda showed that families, communities, and the civil society were prevented from acting decisively against the HIV/AIDS pandemic by government action and inaction in different spheres, prominent anti-AIDS activist Rubaramira Ruranga told a UN conference on the merits of volunteerism on Monday, 10 September. The Kampala government’s poor management of resources, non-inclusive policy-making, corruption and repression were precluding effective action on the part of civil society volunteerism in the battle against HIV/AIDS, despite the country’s glowing international image on the issue, according to Rubaramira Ruranga, coordinator for the National Guidance and Empowerment Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS. That situation could change if civil society united to ensure a holistic and equitable HIV/AIDS policy, which included much greater participation of people living with AIDS, he added. Uganda and President Yoweri Museveni have been repeatedly lauded for their leadership role in the struggle against HIV/AIDS, and Uganda is among the most successful African countries in the fight against the disease. Ugandan health officials reported last week that the HIV/AIDS infection rate among pregnant women attending antenatal clinics had fallen significantly over the last two years -from 6.8 percent in 1999 to 6.1 percent at the end of 2000. This decline in infection rates in pregnant women reflected a general trend of decreased HIV/AIDS infection across the country, according to the director-general of the Uganda AIDS Commission, David Kihumuro-Apuuli. But, according to Ruranga, civil society had developed many of the effective practices for fighting HIV/AIDS, and the government only got involved at a later stage in order to gain political and funding advantages. The resulting Uganda AIDS Commission (UAC) had been used for such purposes, and its statutes showed ignorance of HIV/AIDS, addressing only the symptoms without noting the causes, he claimed. [for more details, see separate IRIN story of 12 September headlined: “Anti-AIDS campaigner says government failing people” at: http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN/index.phtml]