Uganda AIDS program gets results

Efforts by the Lutheran World Federation to combat AIDS in the central African country of Uganda have proven among the most successful of their kind in the region. A four-member evaluation panel established by the LWF studied the programs in July and August of this year and noted that the goals set when the projects were launched in 1995 have been achieved. The LWF efforts concentrates on the Rakai district in Uganda's southwest, one of the areas hardest hit by AIDS.

The disease's transmission is due to several factors, including the region's underdevelopment and the overwhelming poverty of the people living there. Many women who have no sources of income turn to prostitution. In addition, traditional family structures that allow brothers to share wives increase the chances of the disease's transmission within families.

According to statistics, the life expectancy of Uganda's population, which now stands at 60, will have dropped to 40 years by the year 2010. The pandemic has wreaked havoc with family and kinship structures. Many households are headed by children who look after their younger siblings and their fatally ill parents.

The LWF programs work with small groups and families in the region's villages to share information about the nature and transmission of the disease and about necessary changes in behavior and habits. Home care and counseling for those affected are available. Legal aid for widows and orphans is also provided, since, according to traditional patriarchal law, in the case of the death of the head of a family all property is claimed by the husband's clan. Consequently, the wife and children can lose home and land and be left with no means of support.

The education programs are designed mainly for schoolchildren and young people who are at risk of infection. The LWF effort trained some 580 persons overall as professional and volunteer counselors, including 168 teachers, 150 midwives who reach young women not enrolled in schools, and 112 young people who have access to children not going to school. The counselors reached about 3,000 people during 1997, including more than 1,000 people with AIDS and 214 child-headed households.

The program has initiated various agricultural and small-business projects for income-generating purposes. The projects are implemented by 68 village communities and by 207 self-help groups consisting of HIV-infected persons or members of their families. The communities, usually headed by women, are engaged in cattle, poultry and rabbit breeding, or in planting and processing for market different types of fruit such as pineapples, bananas, papayas and mangoes. Young people have been trained in various trades, such as carpentry, metal work, bicycle repair and brick-making. Several of the groups that have accumulated enough savings have purchased land of their own and have continued to help others, including 248 of the poorest widows and 98 young people.

The LWF program works in close cooperation with the district government, the local Ugandan church and the Rakai Counselors' Association, an indigenous nongovernmental organization. According to the plan, the RCA will eventually assume supervision of the AIDS program.

COPYRIGHT 1998 The Christian Century Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning