As part of the activities to mark this year’s International Condom Day, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation in partnership with the ministry of health have launched an ambitious campaign that aims to scale up testing and treatment of at up to 80% of people with HIV/AIDS in Uganda.

Dubbed the “Test and Treat 80% Project”, the initiative aims to raise awareness on availability and access to HIV Counseling and Testing (HCT) and treatment services with initial focus on greater Masaka and Rakai region before rolling it out to other parts of the country.

AIDS Healthcare Foundation together with the Uganda Ministry of Health working under their partnership called Uganda Cares has broken the ground for a new state-of-the- art HIV treatment clinic in Lukaya.

Officials representing the two entities said free condom education and distribution would also be offered in the centre.

AHF-Uganda Cares promotes condom use as a way for people to protect themselves and their partners against HIV and conducts regular HIV counseling and testing.

The project will be initially implemented in the four districts of Masaka, Kalungu Lwengo and Bukomansimbi for the first two years, before it gets rolled  out to other parts of the country.

Despite the fact that HIV devastated Rakai and neighbouring areas in the early days of the disease, new reports indicate that the disease is registering alarming speed of spread in the same places.

And although Uganda had largely brought the spread of the disease under control in the 1990s, the availability of life prolonging anti-retroviral drugs coupled with multiple sex partners especially among married couples, has caused a resurgence in the disease.

Official figures put the rate of new HIV infections at 6.5 percent, which means that the total number of new infections is going up because of rising population.

ARVs have also meant that more people with HIV/AIDS are able to live longer which has raised the burden of the disease.

The good news however is that as more people get on ARVs, their chances of spreading the disease reduces since taking of ARVs can reduce chances of spreading the virus by up to 90 percent. Medical male circumcision confer to a man protection against HIV/AIDS by up to 60 percent.

Dr Mina Ssali, the Public Relations officer Uganda Cares, Said that Uganda Cares holds a National Condom Day (NCD) an annual health initiative, which falls on February 14th –Valentines Day, an ideal time to encourage condom use when love and lust are high.

“NCD serves to remind people about the risks of sexually transmissible infections and unplanned pregnancies when people are celebrating romance, passion, love and intimacy,” said Mina.

Dr. Zainab Akol, the AIDS Control Programme manager at the Ministry of Health (MoH) told The Sunrise that although Uganda has been importing about 120 million condoms a year, demand is far higher than supply leaving a lot of underserved need.

If successfully implemented, the campaign to scale up VCT across the country, and especially in fishing communities like in Rakai and Kalangala would go a long way in reducing Uganda’s unmet need for HIV/AIDS Counseling and Testing (HCT) that currently stands at about 62%, according to MOH.

Uganda Cares is a partnership between the Ministry of Health and AIDS Healthcare Foundation.

The partnership helps to offer treatment to about 28,785 HIV/AIDS clients in 12 districts in Uganda of whom 15,838 are already receiving ARVs while 12,947 are still on septrin tablets.

Although the campaign aims at providing treatment to up to 80% of the people that need it, lack of access to funds remains a major obstacle. For example, according to Dr. Akol, more than 55 percent of the people eligible for ARVs in Uganda cannot get them due to funding constraints.

Already, the biggest part of Uganda’s HIV/AIDS response comes from Americans, who support most HIV/AIDS programmes and provides treatment to over 250,000 AIDS patients. Many observers have called this unsustainable unless the Uganda government improves its AIDS budget.

It also emerged that Uganda was not taking advantage of the availability of HIV/AIDS funds under the Global Fund against HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria owing to past corruption scandals that left many with a sour taste about the fund. blog comments powered by Disqus

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