Lolwe Island continues to grapple with Aids

The 14-village-island with a population of more than 40,000 people only has two Health Centre IIs which are ideally not mandated to deal with HIV/Aids treatment. They have also never had trained health workers; as they refuse to come and work on the island due to lack of infrastructural and social development.

Though fishermen have been identified as one of the demographic groups most at risk for an HIV/Aids infection, perhaps the biggest obstacle is accurate surveillance of the island’s occupants due to lack of vibrant healthcare systems there.

The doctor also a HIV expert, who requests anonymity says despite references in conference halls of how adversely affected fishing communities were by the scourge, there were no comprehensive indicators. There lacks an established monitoring structure making it much harder to represent the trends in the incidence of HIV infection, he notes.

The only facility that would have come in handy-Siwoda (Sigulu Women Development Association) Lolwe Health Centre, a non-government health care unit with a target of offering VCT and providing primary health care to people living with HIV/Aids on the island has been deprived of an annual Shs6.3 million it is supposed to get to stock basic drugs for people living with HIV.

The organisation blames a local woman district councillor who was initially part of the association for their woes. They claim she has all along used her influence to withdraw the moneys living the patients to their ill fate.
As the officer in-charge, Stephen Bogere explains, the association was recognised as an ideal facility to provide services like testing and counselling in the island and was awarded a primary health care conditional grant by government in 2003.

“But we never got a cent from the officials at the district headquarters in Bugiri until 2009 when, following investigations they were ordered to give us the money by the Inspector General of Government, then Faith Mwondha,” he explains, They disbursed only Shs700,000 in March 2009, but since then again they have gone back to diverting the money that should come to the islands.
This means that every HIV/Aids patient on this island has to travel to Port Victoria, Mayuge, Bugiri or Tororo districts for assistance.

It costs patients Shs36,000 to make a trip to and from Mayuge and even more for the other three districts. The patient also has to budget for accommodation because there is only one boat providing transport either from the island or back on any given day.

“This for Lolwe is terrifying since a single digit infection rate in the populated islands could threaten the very survival of this island, likely to produce repercussions for generations to come,” Bogere says.

It is an epidemic, fuelled by the difficult social and economic conditions as women continue to use sex as a means of developing relationships with fishermen to secure a steady supply of fish, with the fishermen in turn investing in drinking and prostitution.

There are two main factors driving the spread of the virus on the island and will keep the disease plaguing the island further into the future. Mr Bogere says they are; a culture of widespread multi-partner sex between men and women, and unsafe sex practices particularly due to the non-use of condoms.
And due to their failure to test, perinatal HIV transmission is also suspected to be taking its toll on the island due to the high infection rate of women of child-bearing age.