UGANDA/FILE: Global Fund withholds millions of dollars in ARV funding over of gay rights in Uganda

Record ID: 277614

  • Title: UGANDA/FILE: Global Fund withholds millions of dollars in ARV funding over of gay rights in Uganda
  • Date: 1st December 2011
  • Summary: KAMPALA, UGANDA (NOVEMBER 30, 2011) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF HIV/AIDS PATIENTS WAITING FOR TREATMENT VARIOUS OF A NURSE CHECK BLOOD PRESSURE OF AN AIDS PATIENT VARIOUS OF HIV/AIDS PATIENTS RECEIVING ANTI RETROVIRAL DRUGS VARIOUS SET UPS OF THE DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF JOINT CLINICAL RESEARCH CENTRE DR CISSY KITYO MUTULUZA (SOUNDBITE) (English) CISSY KITYO MUTULUZA, DEPUTY DIRE
  • Embargoed: 16th December 2011 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Uganda, Usa
  • City:
  • Country: Usa Uganda
  • Topics: International Relations,Health
  • Reuters ID: LVA7BCFQDN5Z2IPVCEN684Q6PBTY
  • Story Text: The Global Fund to fight HIV, AIDS, TB and Malaria is withholding millions of dollars in funding from Uganda because of the country's policies towards sexual minorities.
    The Fund has denied Uganda 280 million US dollars needed to put over 100,000 more people on lifesaving ARV drugs to treat HIV and AIDs.
    The move is said to be a direct response to Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which proposes to make 'acts of homosexuality' a criminal offence punishable by death or life in prison.
    The bill has not yet been passed but international pressure on President Museveni is mounting with rights groups all over the world calling to have the bill vetoed.
    News that the Global Fund is withholding funding has been greeted with outrage by officials in the ministry of health and much of the mainstream press, who say the decision will put hundreds of thousands of people in danger. They argue the decision puts the rights of a minority above the mainstream population.
    "I think it would be criminal for the country and also the international community for example to just stop treatment or just stop providing support to continue the patients who are on treatment, I think what is going to happen is that increasingly we are going to have more caps on the patients we can recruit, new patients we can recruit on to treatment with this kind of dwindling resources, that is the reality and I think that is going to happen," said Cissy Kityo Mutuluza, deputy director of the Joint Clinical Research Centre.
    According to Mutuluza the decision doesn't make sense because she says homosexuals get the same treatment as heterosexual patients under the current system.
    "For the drugs that are available, there is no institution I can speak for my institution but we also collaborate with a lot other institutions, there is no institution that will discriminate against anyone because they are homosexual or lesbian and not provide them with treatment," she said.
    Gay rights activist Pepe Julian is also against the move. While she is adamantly opposed to the proposed law on homosexuality she says cutting funding could further stigmatise homosexuals in the community and mean they also go without lifesaving treatment.
    "When it comes to the decision that the global fund has taken, I do not feel comfortable with this decision because of the stigma and the discrimination that LGBT people face in the community, most of the people are bisexual people, people living under cover, people living under ground, living in forced marriages, or at times even by choice because they do not want to go through the hell, the discrimination that most people go through, so cutting this aid, because most of these people when they go to hospitals, they basically seek treatment as heterosexual people, but we know that their orientation is different from the one they are living by, so that limits them from being able to access that kind of treatment," she said.
    It's not the first time Uganda's treatment of homosexuality has been a matter of global interest. In February this year demonstrators gathered outside Uganda House in New York in reaction to the murder of prominent gay rights activist David Kato in Uganda.
    Kato was beaten to death with a hammer in his home in Kampala shortly after Rolling Stone newspaper in Uganda 'outed' him as gay along with several other people under the headline 'hang them'.
    Ugandan Sidney Enoch was found guilty of Kato's murder and jailed for 30 years in November 2011.
    The Anti-Gay Rights Bill is up for review early next year.
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