Uganda’s HIV/AIDS Prevention, Treatment Efforts Have Produced Best Results in Africa, Opinion Piece Says
"No other country in Africa, much less in most of the world, has come close" to Uganda's success in reducing HIV prevalence, nationally syndicated columnist Georgie Anne Geyer writes in a Dallas Morning News opinion piece. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni in the 1990s implemented an "an all-out fight" against HIV/AIDS, "from admonishing the people against sexual promiscuity to destigmatizing and demystifying the disease," according to Geyer. Uganda implemented the ABC method for HIV prevention -- which stands for abstinence, be faithful and use condoms -- and HIV prevalence has been reduced from about 30% in 1995 to between 5% and 7% currently, Geyer says. Museveni also encouraged research and negotiated prices on generic antiretroviral drugs, which are being provided to 50,000 of the estimated 150,000 HIV-positive people in the country who need the drugs, Geyer writes. "The most important message of this unpretentious little country is that if you put everything together, as it did in its ABC campaign, ... you can do a lot with AIDS," Geyer says (Geyer, Dallas Morning News, 6/3).
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