HEALTH LIVING: ANGER AS UGANDA PASSES LAW FORCING MEN TO TEST FOR HIV WITH WIVES

Human Rights activists are up in arms following the quiet passing of the controversial HIV Prevention and Control Act on Tuesday.

human Rights Watch, HEALTH Global Advocacy Project, and Uganda Network on Law, Ethics and HIV/AIDS said in a statement today that the legislation is “discriminatory and will impede the fight against AIDS.”

The bill includes mandatory HIV testing for pregnant women and their partners, and allows medical providers to disclose a patient’s HIV status to others.

The bill also criminalizes HIV transmission, attempted transmission, and behaviour that might result in transmission by those who know their HIV status.

“This HIV bill is yet another step backward in the fight against AIDS in Uganda,” said Maria Burnett, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “

It is founded on stigma and discrimination and based on approaches that have been condemned by international health agencies as ineffective and violating the rights of people living with HIV.”

Lawmakers believe the new law will help address the alarming HIV infections in the country.

Health experts recently raised a red flag over the recorded increase in HIV/AIDS prevalence in Uganda from 6.4 percent in 2004 to 7.3 percent in 2011.

The shocking results were tabled before legislators at a dialogue organized by the Parliamentary Committee on HIV/AIDS to address the resurgence of the pandemic in Kampala November 26, 2013.

Dr. Joshua Musinguzi the Programme Manager of the AIDS Control Programme in the Ministry of Health said the recent statistics indicate a reversal in the gains the country had attained during the last three decades.

He confirmed that the HIV/AIDS burden stood at 1.3 million people with 145,294 new infections recorded in 2011. Uganda lost 62,365 people to HIV/AIDS in 2011 according to statistics released by the Ministry of Health.

Dr.Musinguzi warned that the HIV/AIDS rates that had gone down in the 1990s have now shot up and require urgent redress. The new statistics point at Women bearing the biggest burden of the disease with 55 percent of the new infections discovered amongst women.

The research attributes the trend to multiple sexual partners as the key driver to the spread of the disease. 80 percent of the men interviewed by health experts accepted leaving with concurrent multiple sexual partners while 68 percent of the women lived the same lifestyle.

However, activists say mandatory HIV testing and the disclosure of medical information without consent are contrary to international best practices and violate fundamental human rights, the three groups said.

“The criminalization of HIV transmission, attempted transmission, and behaviour that might result in transmission by those who know their HIV status is overly broad, and difficult to enforce,” saud Human Rights Watch.

“UNAIDS and other international agencies have discouraged such laws, which can disproportionately target women, who because of health care during pregnancy may be more likely to know their HIV status.”

The bill has been pending in Uganda’s parliament since 2010.

“For Uganda to address its HIV epidemic effectively, it needs to partner with people living with HIV, not blame them, criminalize them, and exclude them from policy making,” said Dorah Kiconco, executive director of Uganda Network on Law, Ethics & HIV/AIDS.

“The president should not sign this bill and instead ensure a rights-based approach, recognizing that people living with HIV will prevent transmission if they are empowered and supported.”

According to the Uganda’s Health Ministry 2012 AIDS Indicator Survey, an estimated 1.5 million Ugandans were living with HIV.

There are at least 140,000 new infections annually, including 28,000 from maternal to child transmission.

Uganda’s HIV policies over the last decade have emphasized abstinence-only approaches for youth and marital fidelity.

Human Rights Watch said combined with punitive laws against sex workers and homosexuals, these approaches are felt by many to have increased the stigma and discrimination around HIV and discouraged more people from being tested and treated.

“At the upcoming international AIDS conference, Uganda will be the example to all the countries gathered of how not to write laws on the HIV response,” said Asia Russell, international policy director at Health GAP (Global Access Project).

“Parliamentarians are doing precisely the opposite of what Uganda should be doing to fight HIV.”

Speaker Rebecca Kadaga recently said the lack of monitoring for HIV/AIDS care and treatment services, coupled with the high costs of drugs, and the reliance on donor support have slowed down the scaling of priority services.

She urged legislators to recommit themselves to fighting the current trend of HIV/AIDS.

“We have to embrace our responsibility as representatives of the people to get involved at a personal level and further to sensitize our constituents and update them on the status quo,” the Speaker added.

The Speaker urged men to get involved in testing for HIV and rallied for counselling of couples at the health centers.