Members Of Parliament Express Concern Over Malnutrition Crisis Facing HIV/AIDS Patients

Lawmakers have called for increased investment in the nutrition of people living with HIV/AIDs if Uganda is to attain its goal of wiping out the disease in Uganda.

The MPs made the call while interfacing with officials from Uganda Aids Commission (UAC) who had appeared before Parliament’s Committee of HIV/AIDs and Other Related Matters after being asked to provide Parliament with an update on the scourge in Uganda.

 Feeding is a big challenge. In Amolatar you find somebody living in a very rural place that feeding a child is hard because she can’t afford nutrition like powdered milk which would take away the kid from breast milk. I think this would be one of the things to happen to this country to see that HIV is reduced, said Okuke East MP, Julius Acon.

He was backed by Josephine Bebona, Bundibugyo District Woman MP, who called on Uganda Aids Commission to increase focus on nutrition among people living with HIV in order to enable Uganda to reduce the scourge of the epidemic.

That long term stay on the breast milk sucking yet they are sucking nothing and somehow you never know, the child may be infected on the breasts. So, nutrition is important and it isn’t mentioned anywhere because nutrition is important because it infects all ages, she said.

The MPs concerns followed a statement presented by Dr Vincent Bagambe, the Director of Planning and Strategic Information at UAC who informed the Committee that Uganda has estimated 1,430,000 people living with HIV/AIDs according to the Ministry of Health and the new infections in Uganda are still unacceptably high considering that the country recorded 52,000 annually, which actually means that 1000 people per week.

The majority of these new infections are occurring among young people with young women accounting for 70 percent of the new HIV infections and this is due to the vulnerabilities created by unequal, cultural and social status. When you look at the new infections and you compare with other countries, half of the new child infections are found in seven countries and Uganda is one of those seven countries contributing the highest numbers in that league, said Bagambe.

According to Uganda Aids Commission, sexual and gender-based violence is a key driver and it negatively impacts access to services especially among women and the key population including female sex workers and their partners have the highest risk of contracting and transmitting HIV/AIDs therefore continue to fuel the epidemic.

 When people travel and they want to relax in the evening, they are likely to relax and interface with female sex workers unfortunately when they go back home, this can be transmitted to the official spouse. By the end of 2022, of the 1.43 million people estimated to be living with HIV/AIDs, 90 percent were aware of their HIV Positive status and of those who were aware, 94 percent of those were on life saving ARVs, Bagambe added.

 At the global level, the Uganda Aids Commission noted that although the world has battled the HIV pandemic for the last four decades and in spite of this and the so many technologies that have developed, and the social advances that have happened, HIV remains a development concern with the latest estimates by the UNAIDs, indicating that since the start of the global HIV/AIDs pandemic, this disease has affected over 85 million people and of these, 40.4 million people have died of AIDs related illness.

As of December 2022, UNAIDs estimated that there were about 39 million people living with HIV of whom 20 million people unfortunately live in the Eastern Sub-Saharan countries and it bears 50 percent of the HIV burden in the world.