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Ugandan women AIDS patients protest against lack of medications

Society Materials 8 July 2010 18:13 (UTC +04:00)
Hundreds of Ugandan women afflicted with AIDS staged a protest Thursday on the streets of the capital Kampala in protest against the current shortage of drugs for AIDS patients, dpa reported.
Ugandan women AIDS patients protest against lack of medications

Hundreds of Ugandan women afflicted with AIDS staged a protest Thursday on the streets of the capital Kampala in protest against the current shortage of drugs for AIDS patients, dpa  reported.

The women, grouped under the National Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS (NACWOLA), waved placards in a peaceful demonstration and then handed a petition to the Speaker of the Ugandan parliament in which they urged government to urgently provide the AIDS drugs or anti-retroviral doses (ARVs).

"We are demonstrating to show the world the commitment of women to the fight against AIDS," NACWOLA executive director Agnes Apea told the German Press Agency dpa.

"We are asking the governmnt to increase the investiment in HIV- preventive measures. We want the drugs to reach the hospitals because people are dying," she added.

Reached for a comment, a spokesman for the government-run Uganda AIDS Commission, James Kigozi, admitted that there were inadequate supplies of AIDS drugs in the country and that health centers were turning patients away.

"These women who are demonstrating have a cause. Most of the distribution points for ARVs around the country are no longer taking on new patients. The hospitals are turning them away because of the shortage of drugs," he said by telephone.

Health officials say that the East African state, with well over a million people with the HIV virus which causes AIDS, has around 400,000 people who qualify for the ARVs. But only about half of the number currently are receiving the medication.

Health officials say that some 130,000 people contracting HIV are registered in Uganda every year. dpa hw dms Author: Henry Wasswa

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