Via New Vision: Uganda in serious need of HIV testing kits. Excerpt:
Uganda is in serious need of HIV testing kits, Uganda AIDS Commission (UAC) boss, Dr. Kihumuro Apuuli has said.
“The need for testing kits is so big. We want every adult above 15 years of age to test (for HIV/AIDS),” Apuuli said while appearing before the parliamentary committee on health.
He pointed out that all the testing kits there are were being bought by donors. He revealed that in money terms the country needs about US$2.5m (about Sh6.6b) for procuring test kits this financial year. Last year eight million people were tested for the disease, he said.
He said the number of women who know their status surpasses that of men. Currently he said, 68% of women between 15 to 49 years of age know their status compared to 45% men and yet studies show that it is men who spread the disease more compared to women.
Apuuli had been invited to the committee to give views on the HIV and AIDS Prevention and Control Bill, 2010 that is before the committee for scrutiny. Also present were Jeroline Akubu and Kenneth Rutaremwa from Uganda Law Reform Commission, who took the MPs through the Bill.
The Bill’s object is to provide for a legal framework that is geared towards the prevention and control of HIV, reducing the transmission of HIV, providing HIV testing and counseling services and creating offences for willful and intentional transmission of the disease, among others. The Private Members Bill was an initiative of the parliamentary committee on HIV/AIDs in the Eighth Parliament.
Apuuli said that churches and other places of worship must first screen couples before they wed them so as to have children born without the disease. There are 1.4 million HIV positive people in Uganda and about 376,000 are on treatment, he said.
