KAMPALA, July 31 (AFP) - The UN Secretary General's envoy for AIDS in Africa said Saturday the population in northern Uganda was besieged by two enemies -- an 18-year-old rebel conflict and the AIDS pandemic.
"The people in northern Uganda are wrestling with the conflict on one hand and HIV/AIDS on the other. Northern Uganda is truly under siege," Stephen Lewis told reporters in Kampala at the end of a week-long visit that took him to the war-ravaged north.
"It is terribly painful in the north and quite devastating, because the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and its leader Joseph Kony have caused incredible devastation," he added.
Lewis noted that HIV prevalence rates in northern Uganda were more than double than in the rest of the country.
Although this year's UNAIDS report indicated that the current rate of HIV prevalence is 4.1 percent, the rate in the war-ravaged north ranges between 16 and 18 percent.
Lewis urged Uganda to increase the number of people it targets to access free antiretroviral (ARV) drugs by about 66 percent from the current target of 60,000 by next year to at least 100,000.
"The target in Uganda seems to me to be too low. The target I suggest should be raised to 100,000 by the end of next year and everything I saw tells me that it can be raised. Everyone felt that they can increase the targets," he said.
Uganda announced last month the start of the distribution of free ARVs in 26 centres in government-run referral hospitals throughout the country, targeting 60,000 people by the end of next year.
Lewis assured Uganda that there would be availability of sencond line treatment drugs made available through the Clinton Foundation at the price of 150 dollars per person per year.
Lewis had just returned from northern Uganda where, he said, he had gone to get the feel of what was happening on the ground and visited displaced people's camps and the so-called "night commuters" -- children who leave their homes every evening for fear of being abducted for the safety of the northern towns.
Up to 1.6 million people are displaced and live in squalid conditions in camps dotting the region, while thousands of children have been abducted either to join rebel ranks or become sex slaves to rebel commanders.
LRA rebels have been fighting government forces in the region since 1988 in a war that has killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of people.
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