Global Fund rushes HIV medication to Uganda amid shortage

The Global Fund, a partnership that sends HIV medication to poor countries, says it plans to send associate degree advance offer of antiretroviral medical aid to Uganda, when the East African country ran out 3 months before the top of last year.

Health activists say the shortage, that began last Sept, hit concerning 240,000 patients on publically funded treatment programmes, forcing them to switch their treatment or stop altogether. Private-sector clinics weren't affected.

The government aforementioned a weak currency and deficient interchange had hampered its ability to finance drug imports.

Some activists aforementioned they suspected runaway election defrayal was behind the insufficiency, however officers denied the charge.

President Yoweri Museveni is seeking to increase his 3 decades in power during a presidential election on February. 18.

In Uganda, about 1.5 million folks, or concerning four p.c of the population, endure the HIV virus, of whom concerning 820,000 receive antiretroviral (ARV) medication, that facilitate keep the patient's microorganism load low and stop transmission.

"The world Fund has already delivered shipments of medicine as regular for existing patients and is front-loading an extra 12-month offer of medicine," Seth Faison, the Fund's head of communications, aforementioned in associate degree email response to queries.

"The 1st consignment of the 12-month front-load can arrive next month, he said. however he acknowledged that front-loading the delivery of medicine, whereas not increasing the overall quantity of medicine it sends, was a "short-term resolution."

"The government has to mobilize resources to fill the gaps and notice a long resolution," Faison aforementioned.

The Geneva-based world Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and protozoal infection, a public-private partnership discovered in 2002 that has created goodly progress in braving epidemics of these 3 deadly infectious diseases.

Uganda has created dramatic gains against HIV/AIDS, transferral the infection rate down from concerning eighteen.5 p.c in 1992, consistent with UN figures.

But Joshua Wamboga, UN agency heads the Uganda Network of AIDS Service Organisations (UNASO), aforementioned "drug holidays" - once a patient stops taking prescribed medication - may spur the event of drug-resistant HIV strains and cause patients to be additional liable to opportunist infections, like protozoal infection.

"NO ARVs suggests that death," he said. "If you've got a plague that kills you and you do not get treatment, you die."