We Must Use our Votes to End the AIDS Crisis in Uganda
Uganda has achieved important progress in the fight against AIDS. But the nation’s AIDS response is under serious threat. Patients are dying waiting in line for access to life sustaining HIV treatment. More than 110,000 Ugandans are infected with HIV every year. There is an epidemic of pediatric HIV cases, with 25,000 newborns infected annually. Success in the battle against AIDS—and the fight for health for all Ugandans—requires a new wave of increased funding, renewed commitment and leadership at the highest levels of the Ugandan government. An estimated 1.2 million Ugandans are living with HIV, and only 180,000 have access to life saving treatment. The fundamental problem facing the country is the lack of resources and evidence-based policies to fight and ultimately defeat AIDS.
Uganda has achieved important progress in the fight against AIDS. But the nation’s AIDS response is under serious threat. Patients are dying waiting in line for access to life sustaining HIV treatment. More than 110,000 Ugandans are infected with HIV every year. There is an epidemic of pediatric HIV cases, with 25,000 newborns infected annually. Success in the battle against AIDS—and the fight for health for all Ugandans—requires a new wave of increased funding, renewed commitment and leadership at the highest levels of the Ugandan government. An estimated 1.2 million Ugandans are living with HIV, and only 180,000 have access to life saving treatment. The fundamental problem facing the country is the lack of resources and evidence-based policies to fight and ultimately defeat AIDS.
We believe that despite more than two decades of effective leadership the Ugandan response to AIDS now requires urgent attention. Without a renewed commitment to scaling up lifesaving HIV treatment, effective prevention, increasing national funding, and defending the human rights of vulnerable Ugandans, the country is at risk of more increases in new infections, and rising prevalence. In 2005, a national survey reported an alarming increase in HIV incidence (see graph, below)—with more than 110,000 new infections, 60,648 of them in women.
Since the onset of HIV there have been approximately 1.5 million deaths from AIDS; AIDS kills 60,000 Ugandans annually—5,000 every month, 165 each day. 25,440 children contract HIV every year as a result of transmission during pregnancy, gestation or breastfeeding. Out of more than 600,000 Ugandans in need of life saving treatment, only about 190,000 currently have access. Insufficient domestic investments have meant that Uganda has left hundreds of thousands of patients in need of treatment and care waiting in line, growing sicker, without access to medicines.
Although new data shows that HIV treatment reduces HIV transmission by more than 90%,[i] clinics in Uganda are turning thousands of patients in urgent need of treatment away because of insufficient funding. This rationing of life saving care is already having a chilling effect on efforts to urge people to get tested—because without access to treatment, people have little incentive to be tested.
To guide candidates and political parties on how to respond to the national AIDS epidemic, civil society organisations in Uganda have developed a guide-ten point platform. This Election Pledge, if implemented, will achieve ambitious progress in treating, preventing, and ultimately ending the AIDS crisis in Uganda. We call on all political parties and candidates to publicly adopt and support this Election Pledge and include these targets in their own party election manifestos.
[i] Donnell D. et al. ART and risk of heterosexual HIV-1 transmission in HIV-1 serodiscordant African couples: a multinational prospective study. Seventeenth Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, San Francisco, abstract 136, 2010.