Back in September 2010, when US President Barack Hussein Obama was speaking to young African leaders in Washington DC about the rising problem of HIV/Aids in Africa, its likely that he had Uganda at the back of his mind even though he didn't explicitly mention the country.

Obama said then: "We're never going to have enough money to simply treat people who are constantly getting infected. We've got to have a mechanism to stop the transmission rate."

The sense of frustration by Uganda's biggest HIV/Aids funder - the United States - is perhaps understandable given the fact that Uganda is the only country out of 34 countries that receive funding under the US President's PEPFAR programme, that is experiencing rising numbers of new HIV infections.

Although several efforts and resources have been invested in finding a cure against HIV/AIDS, most researchers agree that prevention remains the most viable way to defeat HIV/AIDS.

But information from the Ministry of Health shows that more people are instead getting infected making the war against the disease even harder. Statistics from the ministry of health indicate that 132,500 Ugandans contracted the HIV virus in 2010 compared to 110,000 people the previous year. 

And many agree that these figures are grossly understated considering that only about 20 percent of Ugandans know their sero status, let alone the fact that nearly half of Ugandan mothers have their children outside the government hospitals which makes capturing their sero status very difficult.

The development implies that instead of building on earlier gains made in the fight against HIV/AIDS, Ugandans are failing to protect themselves from contracting the disease in the case of adults, while mothers are failing to access life-saving ARVs that would give their unborn babies needed protection against the disease.

According to Dr. Zainabu Akol, the Coordinator of the Aids Control Programme in the Ministry of Health, the trend in new infections has been rising in recent years and has been fuelled by negative changes in people's behaviours that have left hundreds of thousands of Ugandans exposed to the disease.

According to Dr. Akol, the rise in the number of multiple sexual relationships especially among married couples, increased excessive consumption of alcohol and decline in condom use all indicate that many Ugandans are dropping their guard against the disease.

Coupled with a fall in AIDS related deaths in recent years owing largely to the use of life-prolonging Anti-retroviral drugs by some Aids patients, the number of people living with HIV virus has swelled to 2.1 million people.

Experts says that Uganda's rising HIV incidence (new infections) and high HIV/AIDS prevalence (percentage of total population living with the disease - currently estimated at 6.5%) are a cause of great concern.

Not only does the increase in the number of new Aids infections provide momentum for escalation of the disease and expose ever more people to the disease, it also threatens to undermine the country's overall development aspirations.

In Uganda, out of the estimated 520,000 people who need ARVs, only half of them are receiving it. The United States, through PEPFAR supports more than half of all people on ARVs in Uganda, which is unsustainable.

As Tadesse Wuhib, the Director for US Centre for Disease Control - Uganda, noted, for every single person put on life-prolonging ARV treatment, three new people get infected with the disease.

"What is still worrying is that for every AIDS patient put on anti-retroviral treatment there are three new infections. We don't know why this scenario has persisted up to now. Something needs to be done to change this trend," Tadesse told a Sunrise journalist in July this year.

He said: "To achieve 80% will require resources beyond PEPFAR because we have reached our limit."

The above evidence suggests that the government is remotely able or even willing to provide treatment for the growing number of Uganda's AIDS patients who need ART treatment.

According to the Global Access Project (GAP), the continued failure by the government of Uganda to access the only remaining HIV grant from the Global Fund suggests that the NRM government, which won global acclaim over ten years ago for scaling back new AIDS infections, has lost the zeal to fight the disease.

Prevention failing

Perhaps surprisingly, Uganda's past successes that saw a sharp reduction in AIDS prevalence in the 1990s came after sustained efforts by many actors, especially government, faith and community based institutions, the media that vigorously preached prevention, even with little or no money.

But as Tadesse noted Observer last year: "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."

During those days, HIV/AIDS activists had fewer options like condom use, promotion of abstinence and faithfulness than we know today.

Improvements in scientific research has over the past three decades provided more evidence and clarity about better and safer avenues to protect oneself against the virus, apart from ABC (Abstinence, Being Faithful and Condom use).

For example, Medical Male Circumcision (MMC) has been proven to confer to a man up to 60 percent protection against HIV during sexual intercourse with an infected partner.

The government of Uganda passed a policy on Male circumcision to encourage MMC as one of the major ways through which people can protect themselves against the virus.  However, not enough efforts and funds have been put into the campaign to promote the MMC by attacking prevailing myths or even to provide actual services to the already existing high demand for the practice.

On the other hand, Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV has been in existence in Uganda's major health centres for over a decade now. However, as many as 25,000 children continue to get infected by their mothers in Uganda every year.

According to GAP, the lack of an effective PMTCT programme in Uganda 'is creating a completely preventable epidemic of HIV infection among children.'

Dr. Patrick Ndase, a Research Associate with the University of Washington, told journalists at a Health held Journalists Conference last week that taking of ARVs by HIV Positive persons has shown to provide their negative partners up to 90 percent protection if they engage in sexual intercourse.

But experts warn that although HIV treatment can significantly reduce infectiousness if taken exactly as prescribed, it cannot eliminate the risk of transmission completely, as HIV is never completely eradicated from the blood.

According to Ndase, the media, which played a key role in raising awareness in the early days of the scourge, has also suffered from growing complacency. Less effort is put into informing people about the many available avenues for prevention.