KAMPALA, Uganda — Uganda is investigating whether the deaths of 17 HIV positive patients are linked to a shortage of live-saving drugs in the East African nation, a senior Health Ministry official said Monday.
KAMPALA, Uganda — Uganda is investigating whether the deaths of 17 HIV positive patients are linked to a shortage of live-saving drugs in the East African nation, a senior Health Ministry official said Monday. Health officials in Apac District in northern Uganda reported that 17 patients who were receiving anti-retroviral drugs, or ARVs, died in the past month after they could no longer get the drugs, said Dr. Zainab Akol, manager of the ministry’s HIV-AIDs Control Program. The ministry has ordered investigations to determine, "whether apart from the lack of ARVs, another disease like malaria or any epidemic could have contributed to the deaths," Akol told The Associated Press. She attributed the shortage of anti-retroviral drugs to a sharp increase this year in the number of AIDS patients, with donors unable to match the increase. In January, Uganda ran a huge countrywide campaign to encourage people to get tested for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and 100,000 new patients were registered, Akol said. "The number of HIV-AIDS patients increased, yet money provided by donors to buy the drugs did not increase," she said. Akol cited the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which she says funds treatment for 90,000 patients. Despite patient numbers increasing, funding has remained stagnant, she said. Another major donor — the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria — suspended funding to Uganda in 2005 after it found some money had been mismanaged, and funding has yet to resume, said Akol. Dr. Stephen Watiti of Uganda’s National Forum of People Living with HIV-AIDS Network said his group has also received reports about the 17 HIV patients dying in northern Uganda and is investigating whether patients in other areas of the country are affected. Watiti said some government health centers where patients used to get their anti-retroviral drugs have stopped providing them. Patients interrupting their treatment could expose Uganda to "an explosion of a new HIV epidemic that is predominantly drug resistant," Watiti warned. Uganda has been praised as an HIV/AIDS success story. President Yoweri Museveni was one of the first African leaders to publicly acknowledge the disease, and the country launched an effective awareness and prevention program that became a model for the rest of the continent. According to the Uganda Aids Commission, 1.3 million Ugandans, out of an estimated population of 30 million, are living with HIV. The commission estimates about 350,000 Ugandans living with HIV need anti-retroviral drugs. ______ In photo: Executive Director Dr. Peter Mugyenyi from the Joint Clinical Research Centre poses for a photo at a HIV conference in the city of Cape Town, South Africa, Tuesday, July 21, 2009. Dr. Peter Mugyenyi was ready to retire. The first person to import AIDS drugs to an African institution, he had helped President George W. Bush’s pioneering U.S. AIDS fund save millions of lives and along the way grow his Ugandan clinic into the largest treatment center on the continent. Mugyenyi, interviewed Tuesday at an international AIDS conference in South Africa, said USAID officials have told his clinic to stop enrolling new patients. (AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam) Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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