UN envoy urges Uganda to drop laws against AIDS patients, gays

Dec 2, 2009, 15:48 GMT

Kampala - Visiting UN Secretary General Special Envoy on AIDS in Africa Elizabeth Mataka Wednesday urged Uganda to drop its impending laws against people infecting others with the AIDS and called upon the government to soften its stand on gays.

The Ugandan parliament is preparing a law under which an AIDS patient who knowingly infects another with the deadly disease will be jailed for life if convicted by a court of law while an AIDS patient who rapes a minor could face hanging.

Another controversial bill being handled by the legislators would see a person found guilty of engaging in sexual intercourse with a partner of the same sex being sentenced to death or imprisoned for life.

Mataka told reporters that if passed, the law that is intended to punish people infecting others with AIDS will instead force people suffering from the disease to go 'underground' and avoid seeking treatment.

'Criminalizing the transmission of HIV will drive people underground and they will not visit health centers for treatment. Who will go for HIV testing if he knows that he will suffer the death sentence? The law will drive them away from seeking counseling and testing services,' she told a news conference.

Uganda has been one of the world's worst-hit in the global AIDS epidemic and has lost over one million people to the disease since the early 1980s. Over one million others carry HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

To stem the spread of the disease and maintain what government insists are the moral values of the country, parliament is preparing an enactment that intends to punish people found guilty of engaging in same sex intercourse and marriages.

'The Ugandan government should be careful on this (anti- homosexual) law, because it will undermine the homosexual's need to seek treatment from HIV and they will go into hiding,' Ms Mataka said.

The anti-homosexual bill should be discussed by human rights groups and health experts before it is passed into law, she added.