Candia Tom Aliti Principal Finance Officer Budget and Finance Division, Planning Department, Directorate of planning and Development,Ministry of Health. P O Box 7272,Kampala. Mob Tel. +256772574789 Email: [email protected]. In justice and moments of decision, do not maintain attitude of indifference. --- On Sat, 7/23/11, Charlotte M. Zikusooka <[email protected]> wrote: From: Charlotte M. Zikusooka <[email protected]> Subject: No money for new HIV infections - US To: [email protected], [email protected], "Vivian Olgah" <[email protected]>, [email protected] Cc: "Tashobya Christine" <[email protected]>, [email protected], "'Bataringaya-Wavamunno Dr. Juliet - ug'" <[email protected]>, [email protected], "'Murindwa Grace Nyerwanire'" <[email protected]>, "'Moses Mulumba'" <[email protected]>, [email protected], "Dr Nelson Musoba" <[email protected]>, [email protected], "Aliyi Walimbwa" <[email protected]>, "'aliti candia'" <[email protected]>, "Noah Nyende" <[email protected]>, "paul kizza" <[email protected]>, "'Dr.Sabrina Kitaka'" <[email protected]>, "Teresa Guthrie" <[email protected]>, [email protected] Date: Saturday, July 23, 2011, 7:06 AM Written by Shifa Mwesigye Wednesday, 20 July 2011 17:51 Uganda’s HIV incidence is not sustainable and the US government is not in position to increase its funding, a leading American health official has cautioned. The US government, through its PEPFAR (Presidential Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) initiative, is currently the biggest donor to HIV related activities in Uganda. Dr Wahib Tadesse, director of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention-Uganda, said the country’s effort towards stabilising the incidence of HIV is not enough. The HIV incidence in Uganda has stagnated for more than 10 years. There are currently 1.2 million people living with HIV in Uganda. “Right now, we have three new infections for every person started on ART [antiretroviral therapy] treatment. This is not sustainable for the Ugandan government and PEPFAR support. We have to find out what we can do to galvanise the situation,” Tadesse said at the CDC offices in Entebbe on Monday. Uganda is the only country whose HIV incidence did not reduce in 2010, according to a USAID 2010 Global HIV report. Complacency sets in Tadesse said the stagnation can be explained by, among other things, the advent of treatment, which has led to complacency. He said people tend to relax because they no longer see the glaring effects of HIV/AIDS “walking the streets”. People on treatment live longer, productive lives and have HIV negative children if they undergo PMTCT (prevention of mother-to-child therapy); and so, they generally do not appreciate the dangers of HIV as much as before. Currently, only 49% of HIV positive pregnant women in Uganda are on ART. The target is 95%, which Tadesse says requires a significant level of leadership. “Are we doing things right? There is complacency by the leadership and communities. When Uganda was said to be a success, everybody thought the problem was over. In older days when there was no money, people spent time in communities [sensitising the masses] but now that there is more money, people spend time in hotels [workshops] discussing,” Tadesse said. Amid heavy sensitisation and fear, HIV prevalence dropped from 30% in the 80s to 6.7% today. In February, the UNAIDS Country Coordinator, Musa Bungudu, said Uganda must cut down on conferences and channel resources to the actual fight against HIV/AIDS. “We need to balance our upstream and downstream by reducing the number of conferences or workshops and utilise resources to treat people,” Bungudu said at the time, stressing that Uganda has the resources, but ‘commercialisation’ of HIV/AIDS is weakening the fight. Bungudu said expenditure on ‘shop-talks’ should be limited, wondering why, for instance, most workshops and conferences on HIV/AIDS are concentrated around Kampala and not upcountry towns. Centres for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) has partnered with the government of Uganda since 1991, contributing more that $800 million to the health of Ugandan people. This year alone, the US government set aside $140m for health services in Uganda. The CDC supports programmes in HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, polio, measles, influenza, Ebola, Marburg and yellow ever. It also supports HIV prevention, care and treatment programmes in 265 health facilities in 54 districts. It provided ART treatment to 141,537 people, care for 261,080 people, PMTCT to 502,830 pregnant women, and counselling and testing to 989,524 people in 2010 alone. That means the US government provides treatment to 57% of the total number of Ugandans on ART treatment. Tadesse said scaling up circumcision is one of the ways that Uganda can further bring down its HIV incidence. He said circumcision alone can reduce infections by 60% in the country. “There is a huge gap between what we need to be doing and what we are doing with PMTCT and circumcision. As of December 2010, 50% of those who need ART are receiving it. To achieve 80% will require resources above and beyond PEPFAR because we have reached our limit,” Tadesse said. [email protected]
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