AMICAAL partner with UAC to rally Media, Urban leaders to boost HIV/AIDs awareness campaign

By Ben Musanje

12^th July 2023

The Alliance of Mayors and Municipal Leaders’ Initiative for Community Action on AIDS at the Local Level (AMICAALL)  has suggested for urban center leadership to embrace candlelight memorial campaigns in reigniting the grassroots mobilization to end HIV/AIDs pandemic by the year 2030.

Restututa Kagguma Nabwire, the Acting Country Director of AMICAALL while speaking to journalists after the closure of HIV/AIDS Media Mobilization workshop in Kampala on Wednesday noted that the new infections are continuing to happen in the country due to the mobilization laxity by the urban leaders and the media.

According to the Uganda Aids Commission (UAC), the People Living with HIV are 1.4 million Ugandans among which 840,000 are women, 500,0000 men and 880,000 children with new infections standing at 54,000 persons and 17,000 deaths annually.

Nabwire says that HIV/AIDs will only be combated by 2030 once the Candlelight memorial campaign, which is one of the mobilization awareness campaigns, are fully enforced in urban areas.

She says that they need to have media outlets publishing stories against HIV stigma and discrimination that could remind the public that the pandemic is still existing in the country so that they may involve themselves in ending the vice by the year 2030.

Joanita Kemigisha, the Uganda Aids Commission Head of Communication and Advocacy says they have embarked on engaging the media that the public is reawakened in the fight against HIV/AIDs.

She also noted that every hour, at least six people get infected with HIV due to the laxity in the public and few information about the pandemic published in all forms of media.

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