Half a million more Ugandans HIV-positive, says new report

A lab technician checks samples of blood in Kampala. PHOTO BY STEPHEN WANDERA

What you need to know:

The Minister of Health advises parents to embrace the Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission method to check the spread of HIV/Aids.

Kampala

At least 500,000 people have contracted HIV/Aids in the last five years alone, most of them women, preliminary results of the 2011 Uganda Aids Indicator Survey show.

This puts the number of people now living with HIV/Aids at about 2.3 million people up from approximately 1.8 million in 2005. The results released by the Ministry of Health on Friday also indicated a slight increase in the prevalence rate of the disease from 6.4 per cent in the 2004/2005 to now 6.7 per cent among 15-49-year-olds.

Women alone had a prevalence rate of 7.7 per cent and men at 5.6 per cent with higher figures registered in the urban population and wealthier class for women and both rural and urban men had the same prevalence rate.

Those in their 30s and 40s were found most affected by the virus. The unmarried, widowed or divorced were also more likely to be infected.

What was also worrying is that comprehensive knowledge about prevention and transmission of the disease was very low at 34 per cent for women and 41 per cent for men. This meant that most of the messages were either not reaching the people or were misinterpreted.

The sampled districts in the eastern region registered the lowest prevalence rate. Incidentally, the regions where the highest numbers of men practicing circumcision were also recorded. West Nile on the other hand registered the highest prevalence increase from 2.67 per cent in 2006 to 4.4 per cent now.

Some interventions like Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMTCT) were doing well. The survey based on household and individual interviews with 11,340 households.

Long-term survival
Speaking at the release of the results in Kampala, the lead researcher who is the Assistant Commissioner National Disease Control at the Ministry of Health, Dr Alex Opio, explained that the stagnant prevalence rate could be as a result of long-term survival of people with the virus who eventually get captured back in the data and that such a trend is the same with all other countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Minister of Health, Dr Christine Ondoa, said the country is not doing well in trying to contain the disease, urging for more resources to be allocated in interventions to see that the prevalence comes down.

“Now we have an extra 500,000 people to take care of; meaning the burden of the disease is still high. Efforts should go towards PMTCT, safe male circumcision and a holistic approach in order to bring the prevalence down,” Dr Ondoa said.