Uganda: a former AIDS success story?

For a long time, Uganda was viewed as a success story in the fight against the AIDS pandemic. The country had an HIV infection rate of 20 percent in the mid-1980s but that has been reduced to 7 percent today, according to the UN.

But that progress has been called into question recently. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (AIDS and malaria being Africa's two leading causes of death) has suspended anti-AIDS grants to Uganda. The suspension was a result of what the Global Fund called 'evidence of serious mismanagement.'

Shortfalls were created when grants were converted from US dollars to Ugandan shillings.

Most experts ascribe the dramatic drop to word of mouth and the country's emphasis on condom usage. While any discussion of HIV/AIDS is taboo in most African countries, there's been an unusual culture of openness about the pandemic; many give credit to the very top, where the country's leader Yoweri Museveni has spoken frankly about HIV/AIDS and about what needs to be done to counter it.

It's thus worrying that Museveni's regime appears to be backing away from this successful effort. Many blame the Bush administration for pressuring Museveni's regime to place sole emphasis on abstinence. This allegation is denied by both Uganda and Washington.

However, many organizations and news outlets have documented a concerted anti-condom effort recently in Uganda. The UN envoy for AIDS in Africa recently blasted the Bush administration for pushing its dangerous dogma. The US-inspired policy has led to a severe shortage of condoms in Uganda.

Human Rights Watch reports that the Ugandan first lady, a leading proponent of abstinence only 'education,' has called for a 'virgin census' (you can't make this stuff up). She also accused condom distribution organizations of 'pushing them [young people] to go into sex.' The strongman himself lashed out against condoms as inappropriate for Ugandans and suggested that condom distribution encouraged promiscuity among young people.

The organization added: In numerous interviews, Human Rights Watch found that an exclusive focus on sexual abstinence as an HIV prevention strategy failed to account for the lived experiences of countless Ugandans. “I got HIV in marriage. I was faithful in my relationship,” said one Ugandan woman, expressing a common predicament. Indeed, the suggestion that marriage provides a safeguard against HIV may amount to a death sentence for women and girls. Ugandan women face a high risk of HIV in marriage as a result of polygyny and infidelity among their husbands, combined with human rights abuses such as domestic violence, marital rape, and wife inheritance (whereby a widow is forced to marry the brother of her late husband).

Some link 'abstinence only' to Uganda's dramatic drop in HIV/AIDS rates, however Uganda did not start pushing 'abstinence only' until 2001 (the year the Bush administration took power) when the US started aggressively pushing the program. By 2001, the huge drop in infection rates had already occurred.

Some of us think that's a good thing.