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Durban Declaration Rebuttal
Commentary
AIDS IN UGANDA: 20 YEARS OF DEATH AND HOPELESSNESS - REBUTTAL TO OFFICIAL
"HIV INFECTION IS DECLINING" PROPAGANDA
By Peter Kasule
This articles is written and circulated in honor of Thabo Mbeki for standing alone on the
Robin Island of our times marooned by scientific medical Apartheid of Multinational
Pharmaceuticals!!
The Genesis of HIV/AIDS in Uganda.
The history of AIDS (locally known as "slim" due to body wasting) dates to early 1981.
My first time to hear of it was when a wife of a renown born again prominent man died
of AIDS. By then this was regarded locally as a new disease that affects the rich such
as high blood pressure that affects the well to do in our community as viewed by local
illiterate country folk. Then there was no stigma, after all this was a God fearing and
staunch born again Christian family- if this was in the 1990s this would have been
horrible for the family, for the church and an indicator of how even the Christians are
pretending because of the sex propaganda connection of the orthodox.
Then the upsurge of AIDS followed after the 1978-79 liberation war to oust Amin. This
war was a culmination of social infrastructure breakdown and destruction during the
Amin Era: It all began in a failed guerilla war of 1972 led by Obote and Museveni. What
followed was systematic killings of suspected opposition- "Guerillas (rebels) or their
collaborators, the destruction of Industry and economy by Amin's declaration of the
infamous economic war that so the expulsion of Asians. Education was shunned, the
Health Care system went to the dogs, Essential commodities in the African sense-
sugar, salt, soap, paraffin (for lighting African candles made out of small empty cans),
even dressing - used clothes and shoes were beyond the reach of most poor rural
communities and worse still were not available. They were obtained and sold on black
market commonly known as Magendo.
The 1979 war wrecked havoc on many communities. Given these circumstances
malnutrition, and disease of al sorts was on the rise including STDs. I remember people
using cattle drugs to treat sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis and
gonorrhea.
The sanitary conditions ever since have remained sub human- many public toilets in
town ships do not have running water- water is flushed manually by powering water in
the cistern. This can give you a vague idea of the repugnant situation in the slummy
areas where about 5- 20 people use a shallow pit latrine and sometimes don't exist at
all and the whole area without any drainage pattern or refusal disposal. This is the
genesis and the sedimentary rocks that have built the edifice of the elusive human like
HIV that follows human behavior as described in the Durban declaration.
The Cradle and trouble spots of AIDS in Uganda, Diagnosis and community response.
An Isolated fish Landing site Kasensero Village was the first to be hit by AIDS. This
landing site can be equated with the land of the banished. There was and still there is
no culture, or customs on this landing site. So people who migrate to this area to live
the life of fishermen are literally lost. There is no any sanitary structure to speak of.
The lake is all in one; they get water for washing, drinking, domestic use, for animals
swimming and fish in it. Out of the lake men spend the day drinking local potent liquor
(crude lethal spirit) and having sex. In short the place looks a huge human sty. Here
AIDS was born and nurtured. This landing site is also a smugglers den as it connects
other landing sites across Lake Victoria in Tanzania. Among these communities
bordering this lake stretching into Tanzania witchcraft is rampant. With no culture, no
hygiene, poor diet, illiterate and witchcraft prone, these simple people living despicable
lives began dying. The witchdoctors tried their best in the absence of modern
healthcare facilities and failed. The answer was that some unscrupulous traders had
stolen money and property from Tanzania, which is believed to have strong medicine
men and strong Juju (witchcraft) bewitched them. People started throwing away
properties bought and commodities they suspected to have come from Tanzania to
ward off the spell. For almost three years there was no answer to what was killing the
people. Then came the doctors with support from USA and discovered the people were
dying of HIV/AIDS. So is the Genesis!
The Exodus - From Traditional Sorcery to Medical Quackery
The Scare took a new turn with Sex being the crucible. Then came the study patterns
of sexual behavior, the HIV dynamics and all its antics we have been reeling through
and identification of the African risk groups.
The risk groups to be labeled first in Africa particularly in Uganda were Truck Drivers
and prostitutes- despite the fact that we don't have prostitutes as the western world
understand and practices prostitution. In reality this is subsistence survival techniques
of needy women without permanent husbands. These groups by nature of their trade
lived and still live on the fringe of African traditional /modern society- and are
characterized by Drug abuse(mostly alcohol) and overwork and low pay with poor
social standing.
These are needy women who fall back on sex for livelihood. The majority are paid in
kind. Lunch and super, rent, clothes, some money, it is almost a kind of butter system.
If one man becomes serious and remains in the locality he claims the woman for himself
and marries until a quarrel or work takes him away.
Given that these groups were and are still a minority considering the fact that large
populations live in the rural areas it was quickly invented that our cultures and
customs are also route cause of HIV infection and made women the target because
they can't say no to sex.
So the Culture and gender tricks and death traps have been promoted. The SEX,
CULTURE & GENDER pogrom fits well with HIV=AIDS=DEATH. The key to the puzzle is
"Woman" she does not control sex, has no say in cultural matters and economically
and socially dependant and is the weak sex therefore a good instrument.
Because Women are surviving longer than men are, probably the reason now to treat
the pregnant ones with toxic drugs so that they die as soon as possible. If you don't
target the pregnant ones you will never see any woman- they are busy caring for their
families! In Uganda in most communities they only appear at an antenatal clinic in the
last month -a week also to delivery and so the timing of Nevirapine/AZT
While no one in the medical and political establishment does want to open the
Pandora's box, another marginal group was annexed to these minorities. The crazy
blood thirsty rebels and liberator armies of African Dictators. Because soldiers spend
many days sometimes years in inhuman conditions in the bush wrecking havoc on poor
innocent people, it is politically protective for them to contract and spread HIV/IDS by
the nature of their work. It takes away the shame from the arms supplier and absolves
the villain nature of the warlords and cleanses both from crimes against humanity. This
HIV hushes up the ignorant population, it is an instrument of psychological and medical
terrorism to make people fail to see the bitter realities of the evils perpetrated on them
that they cannot demand reparation and compensation for the suffering they have
been subjected to. How can people who have lived a life of Dog eat dog society not
believe that they have been visited by yet another incurable curse especially when
there is support to make you die in the most miserable way, quietly partly being cared
for and partly being killed. It is a bitter better death than dying of machete and
gunshot wounds unattended and your
post-moritem and funeral rites performed by vultures and a host of African scavengers.
Here at least you know you are going to die slowly and you have been convinced that
you are partly to blame for some remotely sexual misbehavior in your long past history
you cannot recall or fathom.
Woe to those who hunger for HAART in Africa - for they shall be filled with Highly
Active expired Anti-Retroviral Toxins through the Drug Access Initiatives.
This is the background of the First part of the genesis and sustainability structures
of HIV/AIDS in black Africa south of the Sahara in the pearl of Africa- Uganda a
Success story of UNAIDS. The second part will deal with preventive, support care and management strategies
of HIV/AIDS and the infrastructure they have been built on.
PART TWO
The pioneer Efforts to Combat AIDS.
1989 was the beginning of the renown AIDS Support Organization (TASO). The birth of
this indigenous organization was solely by the efforts of those affected trying to
survive a hostile environment created by the inventor of HIV/AIDS as an entirely
sexually transmitted plague. What existed was total and extreme stigma towards those
diagnosed or suspected to be suffering from AIDS.
In mid 1990 I left my teaching profession to join TASO. I was driven by two objectives:
1- To contribute to efforts to fight AIDS.
2- To escape the pauper damn US $ 6 salary that I could hardly rent 2 rooms in a slum
area and later on survive on for 30 days. Despite this salary I was still a dependant
supported by a brother- this can give an insight as to why many teachers are dying of
AIDS courtesy of BBC Focus on Africa program reports on the situation in West African
AIDS devastated countries.
In TASO I started on a salary 20 times that of my former calling. After a rigorous two
weeks training in elementary counseling skills we were deployed in the thicket of AIDS.
Our role was to provide psychological support and help those diagnosed understand
their predicament and how they could cope with imminent death and try to prolong
their torturous life to the end. We would provide counseling at the office 10 counselors
on a huge kind of dining table, give ELISA Antibody HIV results at the national hospital
ISS clinic that would run from 8. Am in the morning to 7.pm in the evening, and give
results and counseling service on the wards. We would carry out home visits alone or
with a doctor once a week to give home care support. 10 years now the structures
remain the same except stigma has reduced greatly.
By 1992 Home care service organizations had sprung up in Kampala city based at major
hospitals doing the same job on the same people and even competing for them. It is
worthy to note that a great job has been done by these NGOs in the total absence of
government supported health care system for the population as a whole and for
"People Living with HIV/AIDS" other than official acknowledgement of the AIDS scourge
and encouraging the NGOs to take up its responsibility. Ever since Up to this day these
home care centers have limited their activities to not more than 30 km from the city
center. Beyond that God forbid the fate for the majority is "Everyone for himself and
God for us all!" .
The flaws of HIV/AIDS prevention and management Intervention.
1. The hounding drumming of sex can kill and blanket distribution of condom life jackets
as the sole answer to halt the exaggerated epidemic with political fever.
2. The symptomatic and syndromic treatment approach pumping all sorts of drug
donations down the throats of the sick without technical investigation of the real
causes at clinical level and assessing the conditions the people were and still live in at
community and family level.
3. The creation of HIV/AIDS tribe of the dying as support groups where people
consider themselves as walking copses who think themselves as helpless and needy
awaiting alms.
4. The creation of an orphan generation traumatized and bewildered by death of
parents, loss of childhood, clan and any belonging with out education on the real
issues but get only to understand that their parents were irresponsible to kind of
commit suicide and leave them in a hostile indifferent society.
5. Horrifying cumulative and duplicate AIDS dubious statistics totally inaccurate and
directed at fund soliciting than guiding tools to lay effective strategies to end the AIDS
Mayhem!
What is very clear and has been successfully done is attracting funding by local and
foreign NGOs characterized by competition in writing very technical proposals, carrying
out vicious duplicate activities, driving expensive four wheel drive vehicles and fat
salaries for the carers "Social Workers/technical personnel" both local and foreign.
Research and always research. Results remain on book shelves or workshops attended
by the very same people who funded and carried out the research. The story goes on.
Diseases have increased and are blamed on HIV. It has even caused drug resistance.
The truth is - The living conditions of the people are appalling. Instead of educating
about nutrition, Hygiene, Infection causing germ and their vectors and elimination,
dangers of poor drug administration and repair of the health care system and upgrading
of a dilapidated sanitary system the battle cry is HIV and increasing the current load of
60 million condoms a year. Drugs trade is a lucrative business in Uganda. Any body can
set up a drug stall and sell. The goal is not health but profit. You do not need any
prescription to obtain medication. Just mention a name of a drug, pay an amount that
you can afford and the drug shop attendant will give you the number of tablets or
injectables your money can buy. Beyond reasonable doubt I believe nobody can throw
away drugs after expiry when the motive is purely business and profit.
Policy and Practice.
AIDS clinics have been created now at almost every district hospital in the country.
They are 100% funded by NGOs save for the redundant government health personnel
who have got a salary top up. These clinics run once a week and poor sufferers of
AIDS have to turn up only on that day for medication. All of them are out patient. If
your condition needs admission then if you can't afford the cost you may certainly not
live long.
The AIDS clinics are short of drugs, you get prescription and proceed to buy from a
phamarcy.
One characteristic of all these clinics is syndromic treatment approach very open to
non infective therapy. In my experience of 10 years very few people carry out any
health investigation about other infections they may have after being given an HIV
antibody test positive result. They interpret all their subsequent ill health on HIV.
The Counseling Services have not been developed at all. They don't go beyond
HIV/AIDS testing, Positive Living after a positive result or diagnosis and Condom use
always. In fact the counselors are tied up with other responsibilities than counseling.
Our biggest success in Uganda's Open AIDS policy is "We are a big testing laboratory
for any sort of AIDS related research" Basically the researchers will make the money,
the human guinea pig subjects will hope for a miracle and somehow both parties seem
to benefit. Thus the end of AIDS is not in sight the "Truth of the Durban Declaration."
The results are kept secret so the subjects don't have to worry, and after all during
the research they obtain some free treatment and sometimes token money that can
buy a poor meal for one. The researcher goes home singing with results, however
frustrating they may be but with a fat wallet to see his/her children in the most
expensive school. The foreign researchers and AIDS activists will head for holiday to
enjoy the mountain Gorillas and the tropical sun of the Pearl of Africa.
In the communities there is utter resignation. Their fate accepted and stigma low. For
how long can you keep stigma if you can't migrate to a lesser traumatizing life on any
given village. There is no single populated village of a radius of 10 to 20 km that does
not lose a member "supposedly due to AIDS" on a weekly basis. Unlike in the past
when knowledge about nutrition and risky activities were not available, today the few
educated wealthy ones who are lucky to access it and the means to put it in practice
are living, it is the poor who are dying.
Poverty and always crushing poverty!
Wars and always senseless wars Generating Poverty, Malnutrition, Disease and
Hopeless stress, destroying health care systems, pushing people cramming into
unsanitary conditions. How does these glaring life threatening conditions lock in into
the HIV/AIDS hypothesis.
We have had enough research on HIV/AIDS I suggest we try this:
" Get a small country like Rwanda as a study subject : End the armament and civil war,
eliminate diseases like Malaria through mosquito eradication and other vectors, end
Malnutrition and hunger, repair the health care system, put proper sanitation in place
for a minimum of three years, like the AZT Concord Study and then look at the
results!"
Bravo Thabo Mbeki , remain on Robin Island as long as it took Mandela. For us who live
this genocide we understand, support and have put our faith in you to lead us to the
mainland of hope and life beyond AIDS!
The Writer is a teacher, counselor and community social worker with 10 years working
experience with the orthodox establishment since 1990 in Urban and Rural communities
affected by AIDS in Uganda. Currently he is 
