UGANDA: ONE MILLION PEOPLE SUFFER FROM HIV AND AIDS AND A LARGE NUMBER DO NOT HAVE ACCESS TO AIDS DRUGS.
Record ID:
402588
UGANDA: ONE MILLION PEOPLE SUFFER FROM HIV AND AIDS AND A LARGE NUMBER DO NOT HAVE ACCESS TO AIDS DRUGS.
- Title: UGANDA: ONE MILLION PEOPLE SUFFER FROM HIV AND AIDS AND A LARGE NUMBER DO NOT HAVE ACCESS TO AIDS DRUGS.
- Date: 10th July 2003
- Summary: (U4) KAMPALA, UGANDA (RECENT - JULY 2003) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. WS: OF MILDMAY HOSPITAL DRIVE WAY 0.03 2. CU: SIGN SHOWING INFORMATION ON THE HOSPITAL. 0.09 3. TRACK: AIDS PATIENT, EDWINE TOKAMUHADJE, ARRIVING AT HOSPITAL. 0.17 4. MLV: OF EDWINE TOKAMUHADJE WALKING INTO HOSPITAL. 0.24 5. CU: SIGN ON DOOR READING, 'SAMPL
- Embargoed: 25th July 2003 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: KAMPALA, UGANDA
- Country: Uganda
- Reuters ID: LVA8K2XW3AL9AYLOMZ1PH6X0L64A
- Story Text: To date, close to one million Ugandans suffer from HIV
and AIDS. A large percentage of these people still do not have
access to AIDS drugs, something that George W. Bush has
pledged to act upon.
During his five-nation swing through Africa, U.S.
President George W. Bush will promote a five-year, $15 billion
aid plan, to help fight AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean.
Bush will pay a quick visit to Uganda on Friday (July 11) a
country that has long been viewed as a success story by
Washington, as an East African nation that launched a credible
battle against AIDS.
Yet these days in Uganda, just like in the old days,
people are still talking about AIDS and HIV.
They talk about it honestly and openly, and they do not hang their
heads in shame.
Fourty-one year-old Edwine Tokamuhadje talks freely about
her condition. Her husband died just over a decade ago in 1992
and since then, her health has been deteriorating.
She learnt about her HIV-positive status in 1993. This
came as a shock to her, but she had to get on with life a
life of constant hospital visits, which have now become a part
of her life, and a routine.
She frequently visits Mildmay hospital in Kampala, a
centre that attends to people suffering from AIDS.
The Mildmay Centre was started in 1998, and has since been
attending to almost 6,000 patients with highly complex
conditions. Many of the patients who come to Mildmay are able
to receive subsidised medical care.
Even though some of the medicines are subsidised,
treatment is still very expensive.
The only treatment known to slow the disease, are anti-retroviral
drugs, administered as triple therapy combinations, or an effective
cocktail of three anti-retroviral drugs which slow down the
multiplication of the virus in the body, these are costly.
"They are too much expensive because if you don't have a
source of income, really you can't manage it and even if
someone is trying to push you on, it is a task," says Edwine
Tokamuhadje, whose medical bills are being paid by a close
friend.
Though Edwine looks very healthy, she harbours many fears
fears that come about as a result of opportunistic diseases as
a result of being HIV positive.
Her other major fear includes not being able to afford
treatments, as she has no job.
She cannot work because she gets weak, and fatigue sets in.
Her friends also cannot sustain her illness and they have said they
will stop paying for her medication.
" I am going to go back to the situation I was - the
situation was badly off. I was in a terrible situation, almost
bed-ridden, so since you stop these drugs, the situation might
worsen than before," she laments.
Other than her domestic budget, she has to pay medical
bills, which total thirty dollars a month. For someone with no
work and two school going children and no one to support, this
is really expensive, and has proven to be an uphill task.
But Edwine is luckier that many other Ugandans with the
disease.
Available statistics indicate that even though Uganda has
had major success in combating the spread of HIV, over one
million people are infected with the AIDS virus and are
suffering as is the case with Edwine, who cannot afford
anti-retroviral treatment.
As a result, many patients are not able to continue with their treatment.
"If treatment is discontinued or is not used properly,
then the virus re-emerges again into the blood circulation and
resumes destruction of the immune system, and the patient
begins to fall sick again," says Dr. Peter Mugenyi, from the
Clinical Research Centre, in Uganda.
The average cost of getting treatment are still too high
in Africa, where people continue to struggle for basic needs
like food, shelter, clothing and education.
"The price has come down drastically to about 30 dollars a
month, but still, for the majority of Ugandan's this is still
a very high price- that is why we are making sure that we can
get competitive prices," says Dr Oladapo Walker, the World
Health Organisation representative in Uganda.
According to the United Nations Aids Agency, UNAIDS, of
the 42 million people worldwide living with HIV/AIDS, 30
million, live in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Of the 3.1 million deaths by HIV/AIDS in 2002, 2.4 million were in
Sub-Saharan Africa.
UNAIDS also says that more than 11 million children in
Sub-Saharan Africa have been orphaned by AIDS, and by 2010
that number is expected to climb to 20 million.
Because of HIV/AIDS, the life expectancy rate in some countries in Africa
is also already below 30 years.
But despite the odds, AIDS awareness campaigns in Uganda
still continue.
"In terms of awareness, people are aware and are coming
out in the open - if you don't identify the source of the
problem, you can't treat it, so here we identify it and we
talk about it honestly, plainly and people take steps to
challenge this problem," says a Ugandan, Taabu Simba.
And for the different faces of AIDS in Uganda, like
Edwine's and many others an aggressive aid plan to fight the
disease, where America is pledging to spend 15 billion dollars
over five years, this help could make a difference for the
millions of Africans in the grip of the epidemic.
This American AIDS initiative, focuses principally on
Botswana, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia,
Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia, as
well as Guyana and Haiti.
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