Efter anti-homoloven slår parlamentarikerne i Kampala til igen. Kritikere frygter, at landet vil tabe kampen mod udbredelsen af den frygtede virus, som kan føre til aids i udbrud, fordi folk ikke tør lade sig hiv-teste – Uganda oplever allerede i dag at få over 150.000 nye hiv-positive hvert år.
KAMPALA, 9 May 2014 (IRIN): Activists in Uganda, where HIV prevalence (udbredelse) is on the rise, have warned that new legislation criminalizing deliberate transmission of the virus will further undermine efforts to stem the AIDS epidemic and erode the rights of those living with HIV.
As well as setting out fines and jail terms of up to 10 years for those found guilty of “willful and intentional” transmission, the HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Bill, passed by parliament on 8 May and now awaiting presidential assent, obliges pregnant women and their partners to take HIV tests.
In some circumstances the bill empowers health workers to unilaterally disclose a patient’s positive status to an at-risk partner or household member. It also obliges parents to tell their children of their status.
“Despite years of engagement and labouring to explain the dangers on an HIV-specific criminal law, parliament has refused to be advised. When experts on HIV research and management attempted to speak, lawmakers still failed to heed to the key concerns,” Dorah Kinconco Musinguzi told IRIN.
She is executive director of Uganda Network on Law, Ethics and HIV/AIDS (UgaNet).
“If we have not managed to test 67 percent of Ugandans for HIV without a law that punishes transmission, will this number improve when citizens know that more legal burdens are added to testing? The answer is no”, she said, adding:
“Will their behaviour improve because of this fear? No. Will we have helped the HIV situation then? No. We shall have more people transmit HIV in ignorance of their status. Laws do little to change behaviour, instead it takes behaviour underground”.
“Criminalization of HIV does not work”
Over the past five years HIV prevalence in Uganda has risen from 6.4 to 7.3 percent.
“The evidence from the Ugandan Ministry of Health shows clearly – criminalization of HIV does not work. It drives people away from services and fuels discrimination and fear,” Asia Russell of the HIV advocacy organization Health GAP, told IRIN.
Alex Ario, the national coordinator of the ministry’s AIDS Control Programme (ACP), said “the bill may not be that useful in my view. It does not add value to the current efforts”.
“Actually, with dwindling support from donor communities to ACP as it is now, we would rather divert efforts to lobby government of Uganda to put more money for HIV activities rather than legislating against people with HIV.”
“We need to redirect legislative reform, and law enforcement, towards addressing sexual and other forms of violence against women, and discrimination and other human rights violations against people living with HIV and people most at risk of exposure to HIV,” he said.
Russell of Health Gap added that in conjunction (i forening) with the Anti-Homosexuality Act, which passed into law in February 2014, this new law could lead “a sex worker apprehended (anholdt) for sex work, who is transgender and HIV positive, to be sent to prison for life.”
“Will hurt the women”
UgaNet’s Dorah Kinconco Musinguzi said:
“This bill will hurt the women we have been encouraging to come up to take an HIV test such that they can have HIV-free children. But in this case, they will be forced to disclose their results and should they fear, and not do it in time, that means that they are potential candidates for prosecution under the bill”.
“There is high likelihood that justice will not prevail for the HIV-positive [people] found in this situation because of the high levels of stigma (social forstødelse) and condemnation that we have seen the HIV-positive go through,” she added.
More than 150,000 people are becoming HIV-positive every year; 1.5 million Ugandans are HIV-positive, according to Uganda AIDS Commission statistics.
The bill flies in the face of (går stik imod) the “rights-based” approach to HIV embodied in the regional HIV/AIDS Act passed in April 2012 by the East African Legislative Assembly.
Those in favour…
Læs videre på
http://www.irinnews.org/report/100067/alarm-as-uganda-moves-to-criminalize-hiv-transmission
