Free AIDS Drugs for Extra 32,000 Citizens. 28/9/10
United States government gave Uganda more money.
By Yasiin Mugerwa
28 September 2010
Kampala — An extra 32,000 people living with HIV will receive free life-prolonging treatment over the next two years after the United States government gave Uganda more money.
Dr Kihumuro Apuuli, the director general of the Uganda Aids Commission (UAC), the government body that coordinates the national response to the epidemic, told Parliament yesterday that the new funding will double the number of Ugandans receiving free anti-retroviral treatment.
"This is good news because Americans have been helping only 36,000 people but they have doubled this number beginning this financial year," Dr Apuuli told MPs on the Public Accounts Committee yesterday. Ms Joann Lockard, the public affairs officer at the US embassy in Kampala, yesterday confirmed the funding increase. "We are talking about an increment of between $20 million- $30 million. Our funding for HIV/Aids now stands at $300 million," she said.
The development represents a change of heart in the Obama Administration, which had earlier indicated that it would not increase its current level of funding committed through the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (Pepfar), an initiative of the American government.
Dr Apuuli told MPs that despite the increase, Uganda needs more than $500 million (about Shs1 trillion) to combat the epidemic and will need to find new ways to address the rising number of infections. "The Americans have increased funding but they are telling us to either swim or drown if we don't reduce the new infections," Dr Apuuli said. "For instance last year we registered 124,000 new infections compared to 110,000 in 2008. This means in the next two to three years more 14,000 will need ARVs."
Increased need
MPs heard that the number of Ugandans living on ARVs - the drugs that reduce HIV in the body and postpones the onset of Aids - had risen from 10,000 a decade ago to nearly 200,000, many of them getting donor-funded treatment. However, figures from UAC indicate that an extra 300,000 Ugandans in need of ARVs do not have access to the drugs because they cannot afford them, and that an extra 124,000 become infected every year, increasing the number of those who need treatment