BY Flavia Kyomukama

How can we criminalize HIV transmission when we haven't fulfilled our own obligations in the family, community and government? Where is the Penal code in all this? How about the Domestic Relations Bill and Sexual Offences Bill? How much investments have we put into livelihoods to contain HV transmission?

All the above questions beg answers. However, HIV/AIDS in a culture like ours has really doomed us Africans. In a country like Uganda where:

• Only 12% Ugandans have actually tested for HIV and actually received their results,
• Only 17% of the people living with HIV know their HIV status.
• 60% of couples are discordant.
• In the year 2007/8 only, 80 million condoms were procured,
•  Where Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) coverage is only 42%. ,
• The government does not allocate any specific resources to HIV but rely on foreign donation and sympathy.
• Some international NGOs have all registered locally to also take part of the available resources which may have otherwise benefited the local organizations.
• A country Where Joint Clinical Research Council has pulling out of some centres and cannot enroll any new person with HIV for ART unless their CD4 is 150mm or below.
• Annual new HIV infection is 132,000 and 25% of these are newly born.

And, where only 30 % of global investment has gone to agriculture in the last decade plus increased sale of public propriety with impunity with no accountability to the people. This has further complicated the already complex situation.

Therefore, criminalizing HIV transmission has the following consequences especially on women. Women are the ones that interface with health centres more regularly and likely to be tested for HIV and therefore discover their HIV status first. While the HIV Bill in the offing also indicates women will be asked to inform their spouses and if they do not within a stipulated time then the doctor or counsellor will inform the husband. What is likely to happen in such a situation? I hope we are thinking on the same plane. If yes – the woman is likely to be sent out of the home if she is seen as source of HIV infection and therefore denied a livelihood even if she has been in the family and contributed, for say, over 20 years to the family development. So , wont this prescription endanger society? Aftermath of HIV screening, many times a man may send the woman away, she is packed off with her children or if she leaves the children then the children may get less attention from the new mother and consequently get abused by relatives and employees in the household. The abuse can range from child labour, dropping out of school, incest, defilement and rape. For the case of a girl child, she may be forced to find love elsewhere and will land in the hands of other scavengers in form of men, get married early, have unwanted pregnancies and the unfortunate cycle continues. This will be a key source of new infections.

Another scenario likely to pop up is children suing mothers for HIV infection, children may murder mothers. Children born with HIV frequently hear of messages like, when you have sex with one infected, you are likely to get re-infected so their thinking is that since one who is HIV negative will not infect me, I will go in for that one. For this young boy or girl, it’s a means of prevention, isn't it? And isn't that what our medical personnel preach to us. The next day when an HIV negative girl or boy gets infected, then they will sue the other partner.  In their defense if they referred to the information received from the health centres about being re-infected by fellow HIV colleagues, would not they have a case?

The other issue is the ABC plan.  If one is told to keep free from HIV he/she must Abstain, Be faithful and or use a Condom. Take a case scenario where one practices ABC at 28, he/she gets a partner and marries. Then two years later one partner finds has HIV. What would his or her reaction? That my partner I live with was the one who infected me. The recipe we prescribe for the young people must be richer than ABC yet most young people receive that message plainly. We must make these messages comprehensive as to include all the needs and requirements that promote HIV prevention, care and treatment and social support. However, in our National Strategic Plan, little funding has been suggested for social support yet the mainstay of HIV prevention is social support. Issues of social welfare and protection lie there; issues of livelihoods lie there on the shelf. Donors want to train but many of them do not want to provide start-up capital.  

 

We must ensure that people have ample livelihood to pay for their children to remain in school, to afford travelling to the ART centres, to afford to understand condom use and related negotiation- this is especially difficult for girls/females. We must ensure that we have PMTCT that reaches all the sub counties.  

 

The Domestic Relations Bill (DRB) that seeks to protect the rights of woman and men in the family has consistently been opposed in this country. Do we ever put into perspective the aspects that the DRB would sort out if we had a better justice system that ensures equity and equality for men and women?

Allow me to keep thinking aloud as you know when thinking there is no order. Our justice system has been weak in protecting woman and children especially in the days of property land grabbing by relatives and other people. Many woman and their children lie on the streets because their greedy uncles and aunts cannot bear to see them enjoy the fruits of their departed parents. If they go to police, police will ask for money before they act. However today, I think no police man can interfere in any property and land wrangles as the President has had to intervene to help.

Many women with HV have often been stressed to death by court frustrations and prefer to ignore their spouse property in the hands of intolerant in-laws. Even for FIDA, which is supposed to provide legal services, there some costs involved in the litigation.
Where there are other priorities like providing food to your children, school fees, suing becomes a privilege. Issues of sex in Africa and Uganda are rarely discussed in public. Sex issues still remain in the private realm. Can the initiators of the HIV Bill tell us how to go about reporting some husbands and boyfriends who rape us every night? After he paid the bride price, can we say it is rape for a married woman? Oh as I recall aloud again the Sexual Offences Bill (SOB) which is supposed to regulate this rape and define rape is only gathering dust on the shelves.

The writer is the National coordinator, Global Coalition of women against AIDs in Uganda