----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, July 12, 2003 8:07
AM
Subject: ugnet_: Americans Associate
Uganda with Coffins-R.Mugagga-Chicago-USA
Fellow netters in North America,
Has Mr.Mugagga really given us a realistic
impression of the media coverage in the USA as related to the just
concluded visit to Uganda by President Bush?
Omar Kezimbira
............................................................................................................
Americans associate Uganda with
coffins
For the last two days, major television stations and
newspapers here are giving more attention to countries President George W.
Bush is visiting in Africa.
It is good that
Americans are praising Uganda under President Yoweri Museveni for managing to
reduce the infection rate of HIV/Aids.
However, some cable
television stations are going far in associating Uganda with Aids. For two
days now, ABC TV, for instance, is showing pictures of boneless patients in
hospital wards suffering from Aids.
ABC�s evening
�Nightline� programme on Tuesday devoted most of its time to Uganda, showing
among others, heaps of coffins ready for sale in some Kampala locations. Again
on Wednesday, when ABC�s �World News Tonight� mentioned something about Bush�s
visit to Uganda, pictures of coffin-making workshops in Kampala accompanied
the story.
As a result, the
impression some Americans here are getting is not Uganda being successful in
combating Aids, but people continuing to die from the disease in big numbers.
To them, the heaps of coffins shown are all bought immediately. Unknown to
them, many of those coffins remain in store for weeks, if not months, unsold.
Besides, malaria could
be killing more people than Aids in Uganda, just as diabetes and heart attack
are the leading killers in America. Statistics here show that a total of 647
people were murdered in Chicago alone during the year 2002. I doubt whether
even a quarter of those murders can occur in Kampala in a single year.
This shows that every
nation has its own problems.
It is unfair of
foreigners to associate Uganda with coffins. May be coffin makers are also to
blame for parading their products on roadsides.
Robert
Mugagga,
Chicago - USA.
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