Associated Press - October 17, 1998

The immune-stripping disease first killed Annet Namuyomba's father, then her mother. In many African countries, she and her brothers and sisters would have been shunned by relatives.

But in Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni -- from the time he took power in 1986 -- made his country the first on the continent to respond with candor and activism to AIDS, encouraging prevention as well as care for the stricken and their children.

Museveni recently called on African leaders to be more aggressive in fighting the disease, which has infected 21 million people on the continent, two-thirds of the worldwide total.

"African governments must be open and accept the challenge in order to be able to fight the epidemic," said Museveni, who went on to blame the inroads of AIDS on Africans imitating the promiscuity of Westerners.

"This sexual laxity existing today is a colonial phenomenon," he said at an AIDS conference Sept. 21. "We have lost the traditional values, and yet we do not have a sophisticated health network of the modern world."

Uganda, which had the highest AIDS rate in the world in 1982, is the only African country south of the Sahara to achieve a decline in new infections.

The overall rate dropped from a peak of 14 percent in 1990 to 9.5 percent last year, according to the U.N. AIDS program.

"Uganda has proved that intense response to the AIDS epidemic can achieve measurable results," said Elizabeth Marum, an adviser from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Still, "slim disease," as Ugandans commonly call AIDS, has taken a huge toll in this East African country, where some researchers think the epidemic may have begun in the late 1970s.

More than 2 million Ugandans -- more than 10 percent of the population -- are now infected. More than 1.8 million already have died.

Realizing the disease threatened the social, political and economic fabric of his country, Museveni engaged religious and traditional leaders and other sectors of society in an urgent debate that forged consensus around the need to attack AIDS.

AIDS education messages have been common in the mass media, including radio, which is widely listened to in Uganda. Roadside billboards encourage abstinence, fidelity -- and, when willpower fails, the use of condoms.

Condom sales have soared from near nil when the epidemic broke out to 40 million last year. Setting aside a half-finished, blue-striped shirt, Namuyomba said she has learned the value of safe sex through the Kamowokya Caring School, which is run by a Christian community in a Kampala slum.

The tailoring skills she is learning are intended to give her an income so she will not be forced to turn to prostitution. Others are studying bricklaying, baking, carpentry and cobbling.

In 1995, the Uganda Demographic and Health Survey found that nearly all Ugandan adults had heard of AIDS.

Today, Ugandans report fewer casual sexual partners, and young people are delaying sexual activity.

The courage of people with AIDS in counseling other sufferers and their families has made a dramatic and emotionally compelling contribution, said Mary Grace Alwano Edyegu, executive director of the AIDS Information Center.

The center opened in 1990, Africa's first offering anonymous AIDS counseling and testing.

"People think, if it could be this one who's infected, it could be me," she said.
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