46 Ugandans Are Dying Daily From HIV/AIDS – Ministers

Posted by: Kyeyune Andrew Jonathan in Health November 30, 2022

The parliament has asked government to bring back intensive HIV/Aids awareness creation campaigns to curb the spread of HIV/AIDS.

It said these campaigns should focus majorly on adolescents because they are registering the highest number of infections.

This call came after a statement by the Minister of Presidency, Ms. Milly Babalanda pointing out the infection rate among adolescents.

“Infections among young people (15-24 years) accounted for 37 percent of all the new HIV infections in the year 2021. The new infections are occurring three times more among young girls compared to the boys in the same period,” Ms Balalanda, who was quoting statistics from the Ministry of Health, said.

Despite all the milestones registered by the country in this fight, Ms Babalanda said there are still some challenges. She said that almost 1000 people are infected with HIV every week and about 325 die from it every week.

According to Rakai Woman MP, Ms Juliet Kinyamatama, new infections are high among the school-going age group.

“The Office of the President and the Ministry of Education should work together to see that we have school campaigns,” she said.

There are 1.4 million people living with HIV in Uganda. These new infections are generally driven by numerous sexual partnerships and sexual promiscuity, among other factors.

The Covid-19 lockdown in 2020 also affected the efforts to control the spread through disruption of outreach services and access to care.

Legislators said that the lockdown in Mubende and Kasanda could also play a major part in the increase of HIV cases there. In some of the suggestions, they appealed to the government to increase funding to the cause as donor funding are declining.

This comes as the country is preparing to celebrate World Aids Day on December 1. This year will be under the theme “Ending inequalities among adolescent girls, young women and boys”.

Check Also;

This is not a Paywall, but Newslex Point's journalism consumes a lot of time, hard-work and money. That's why we're kindly requesting you to support us in anyway they can, for as little as $1 or more, you can support us .

Please use the button below to contribute to Newslex Point, Inc. using a credit card or via PayPal.