World Aids Day, Uganda
"Infections are going back up again, and we need to get back to the drawing board as young people and see what relevant techniques we could use if we are going to a school outreach."According to Ugandan researchers, the AIDS virus spread has been hastened among married couples in polite society, in response to the secret lovers or mistresses that Ugandan man take on, a popular 'cultural' phenonemon named "side dishes" where the mistresses are poor teenagers preyed upon by wealthy, often HIV-infected men. Such predators infect not only their own wives, but unsuspecting and helpless teens.
"That's the reason why we are working with [reformed thief, onetime drug peddler] Hood Katende. If you don't integrate music, if you don't integrate drama into the message you are trying to carry out forward, some people may not realize how grave the situation is."
Lawrence Mukiibi, youth co-ordinator, Treasure Life Center, Kampala, Uganda
"At night you find boys waiting for girls to rape, and I go to them and I try to talk to them not to do it. I used to be with them, smoking weed the whole day in the ghetto and moving around at night."
"I was a member of a gang, but now they see that I have changed day and night."
Hood Katende, 26, anti-AIDS activist
Each week HIV transmission infects over 500 young women between the ages of 15 and 24, according to the Uganda AIDS Commission. The number of Ugandans infected with HIV rose from 1.3 million to 1.6 over the six-year period from 2007 to 2013. This, according to the country's Ministry of Health. Although they have the statistics the government does not appear to have the will to mount an anti-AIDS campaign.
The prevalence rate in the country of HIV infection stands a 7.4 percent, an increase from around six percent a decade earlier. Activists want Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's government to resurrect the old prevention campaigns from the 1990s that made Uganda a global leader in the control and spread of HIV.
The spiralling increase of HIV infection is hugely troubling to the Western donors contributing to the cost of IDS treatment for poor Ugandans, ensuring that a quarter-million Ugandans have access to AIDS treatment. Impoverished girls in Kampala's Kamwokya slum are accustomed to desperately scavenging for food and clothing. Many of those girls have been repeatedly raped.
Hood Katenda watched recently as a dozen children in a dance troupe perfected their hip gyrations, then accompanied him as dancers to take part in an AIDS awareness performance they plan to take across the east of the country. As a "change agent", Hood Katenda is paid to perform at UN children's agency functions, events where singers perform rap encouraging voluntary HIV testing.
Activists with street credibility and a compelling life story of their own are used to reach out to impressionable young people in communities where violent crime, poverty and sex attacks against girls and young women are prevalent, through the production of "edutainment"; public activities such meant to entertain while educating about reproductive health; a large part of the education arsenal funded by local and foreign donors.
| Rebecca Vassie/The Associated Press -- Children perform a traditional courtship dance from eastern Uganda as part of a platform for changing attitudes among youth using dance, drama and popular hip hop music in the Kamwokya slum of Kanpala, Uganda, to mark World AIDS Day |
Labels: Education, Entertainment, Health, Uganda
posted by Pieface @ Monday, December 01, 2014
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