President launches new quick fight plan against HIV/Aids

President Yoweri K Museveni . FILE PHOTO

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President Museveni has asked that the fight against HIV/Aids be redirected to focus on prevention of new infections if the global target to eliminate the scourge by 2030 is to be achieved.

HIV/Aids has no known cure to-date, and Mr Museveni has stressed that avoiding contraction of the HIV virus in the first place is the only sure way it can be eliminated from the Ugandan society.

“Aids is not infectious, which was our original worry in the 1980s and it is spread through a few well known ways that can be avoided. If new infections can be halted, Aids will be history,” the President said, according to a press statement issued on Friday.

The President was speaking during the launch of the Presidential Fast-Tracking Initiative on the Elimination of HIV/AIDS that targets total elimination of the scourge from the Ugandan society by 2030.

The event, which took place at Isingiro District headquarters in Isingiro Town Council, also attracted representatives from 28 districts in south-western Uganda.

New fight plan
Mr Museveni added that he had “started a fresh advocacy initiative in the fight against HIV/Aids scourge after getting reports of increasing new infections, especially among young girls, due to complacency in society that was affecting the struggle against the virus.”

He added that this new initiative is meant to rekindle the earlier efforts and remind Ugandans that HIV/Aids still exists in our society and poses a great danger but can be defeated.
Ms Esther Mbayo, the Minister for Presidency, who has been put in-charge of the implementation of the initiative, said the programme’s core focus is to engage men in HIV/Aids prevention in order to halt new infections.

“To achieve that goal, we have engaged all stakeholders, political, religious, civic and cultural ones,” Ms Mbayo said.
Other focus areas of the initiative include stopping mother-to-child transmission of the HIV/Aids, ensuring financial sustainability of HIV/Aids-related programmes and ensuring institutional effectiveness in the fight against the scourge.

New infections

Affected group. According to UNAIDS statistics, 66 per cent of the new HIV infections are of adolescent women aged between 15 and 24 and the lack of the right to negotiate for sex by the women is one of the causes of these increased infections.