UGANDA: HIV rates still high in northern camps
Photo: Stuart Price/IRIN
Prevalence rates in the war-torn north are high
Lira, 25 August 2006 (PlusNews) - Health officials have expressed concern about high levels of HIV among people displaced by war in the northern Ugandan district of Lira, where tests in some camps have revealed infection rates of up to 30 percent.
According to James Ochama, a clinical officer at the government-run health centre in the Aleb Tong camp, which houses more than 22,000 internally displaced people, 35 of the 131 adults tested in June were HIV-positive, while 45 of 146 adults tested in July were infected.
Two decades of war between the Ugandan government and rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army has forced an estimated two million people to seek refuge in government camps protected by the army. Some have lived in camps for over a decade, but protection often comes at a cost: the social structure of communities is in tatters, and alcoholism and sexual violence have become commonplace.
"One of the main problems here has been high teenage pregnancy and high prevalence of AIDS," Ochama said.
A 2005 report by the government and the United Nations Children's Fund found that at least 60 percent of women had encountered some form of sexual and domestic violence in Pabbo, the largest camp in Gulu district. Health officials and camp residents partly blamed soldiers guarding the camp, who were willing to spend money on sex in an environment where people were poor and desperate.
"Promiscuity is a result of crowding and poverty. Soldiers are the only people with regular incomes here, so they are able to lure young women into sex with money," said Julio Omara, an Aleb Tong camp leader.
Betty Obote, 28, a mother of three, said idleness and boredom also contributed to spreading HIV. "Sexual relationships develop easily here because people are always loitering around with nothing to do. People have lost the values they used to have in their villages."
According to the 2004/05 Uganda Sero Survey, the national HIV prevalence rate is 6.4 percent. But in the war-ravaged north, where people have little access to HIV/AIDS prevention, care and support services, it is estimated at over nine percent in some areas.
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