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  • Title: AIDS lays waste to Uganda.
    Author: Bond C.
    Journal: New Afr; 1986 Jul; (226):30-1. PubMed ID: 12340745.
    Abstract:
    In Uganda, people are dying every day of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), known as "Slim." In the Rakai district, as may as 2500 people may have died of Slim in the past 4 years, around 1% of Rakai population. There is no chance that people with Slim in Rakai are suffering from malnourishment, and the disease's link with AIDS was established last year when blood tests from patients gave a positive reaction to the HTLV3 test for AIDS. Rakai's trade links with neighboring countries appear to have joined it to Africa's AIDS belt, which cuts across Zaire, Zambia, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, and Uganda. Experts now say that 100 people in every 100,000 are AIDS victims in this zone compared to 80-90 people per 100,000 in New York and San Francisco, where AIDS has hit homosexuals particularly hard. Yet, in Africa homosexuality is rare, and AIDS is heterosexually transmitted, putting any sexually active man or woman in these East and Central African countries at high risk of catching the disease. Nurses in the Mulago Hospital in the Ugandan capital of Kampala say that AIDS patients rarely stay longer than 6 weeks. Only the symptoms of AIDS can be treated. After that, medical care is more or less irrelevant as there is no cure for the disease itself. From the point of view of research, doctors try to keep track of people who give a positive result to the AIDS test. Some patients develop AIDS symptoms and then appear to recover though doctors assume that they may become ill again. Not all people in Europe and America who carry the AIDS virus develop the disease, but it is too soon to tell whether they will live to old age or develop it at some later stage, maybe after several years. In Rakai, residents told about women whose husbands had died of Slim a few years ago but who themselves were alive and well. Rakai harbors the worst of Uganda's AIDS epidemic, but the disease is increasing at an alarming rate elsewhere in the country. Since the civil war ended at Easter, AIDS has gained much coverage in the local press. It also has become the main topic of conversation in Kampala's downtown bars. The Health Ministry has distributed posters to hospitals and dispensaries, which read "Warning-Advice on the (Slim) AIDS disease," and list precautions such as limiting sexual partners, preferably to 1. The posters also recommend the use of condoms during sexual intercourse, but these are not available in Uganda. About 15% of Kampala's blood donors have been found to be contaminated with HTLV3. Researchers are concentrating their efforts on pregnant women who have been found to have the AIDS antibody and on children.
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