Uganda: Help Africa's Gay Men; You'll Save Their Women Too - AllAfrica.com

Terrible, the news that came out this hebdomad as we marked World Aids Day. Things are very bad in Africa, and the poorer parts of the world. Some folks even declared that Africa, where about 70 per cent of the 36 million people worldwide infected with HIV/Aids live, is losing the warfare against the disease. Aids killed a record figure of people in the 3rd human race and Eastern Europe this year, but Sub-Saharan Africa stays the worst affected part with about 3.2 million new infections and 2.3 million deaths.

When one believes of it, there is nil new in those inexorable numbers. Nearly everything have got been tried to cover with Aids in Africa, but it looks not to have the dramatic consequence it should in order to change by reversal the carnage. And the grounds for the failure are, again, not new - bad and corrupt government, wars, icky infrastructure, illiteracy, and retrogressive cultural practices. It looks that until we lift above concentrating on the conventional causes for the monolithic devastation by Aids in Africa, people will go on to drop off like flies. One topographic point to get is a survey done by the planetary organisation, the Population Council. It have not been talked about much because it is about a tabu topic in Africa - homosexuality.

Ask the broad don, Dr Sylvia Tamale of the Makerere University Faculty of Law. She have many ruffled plumes flying in the air presently after she argued, sensibly, that harlotry should be decriminalised. But the present violent storm she have caused with advocating a more than enlightened mental attitude toward sexual activity workers is nil compared to what happened early this twelvemonth when she said it was incorrect to handle homoes like criminals. The priests, sheikhs, politicians, and other "guardians of the people" threw everything, including the kitchen sink, at Dr Tamale.

That in itself was not surprising. The distressing thing was that when the anti-gay campy really went into high and shrill gear, even many champs of freedom of look were too scared to publicly support Dr Tamale's right to throw her sentiments - even if they disagreed with them.

Against that background, it is easy to appreciate why, perhaps, the Population Council survey was not given attending around Africa. The survey establish that Senegal, while being the lone state in Africa that have had better success than Republic Of Republic Of Uganda peal back the March of Aids, have no meaningful programs to cover with gays.

In Uganda too, there have never been a single Aids consciousness message targeted at cheery people. This is because most people see it an "ungodly" sexual orientation.

The Population Council survey sought to happen out the consequence of this. It discovered that there are far more than work force in Republic Of Senegal who are gay, than was publicly acknowledged. However, the slayer determination was that very many work force who are gay, are otherwise "happily" married to women.

Because cheery work force ran into discretely, their wives would not cognize it and are therefore contented that they are "safe" - because we are conditioned to observe a adult male who is cheating with a woman, or a adult female with man, not a adult male who is cheating on his married woman with another man.

Relevant Links

Now, because cheery work force are a particularly high HIV-risk group, and they are totally ignored by Aids instruction campaigns, if we conceive of that there are many such as African work force then the infections which we are unsighted to and doing nil to prevent, are wiping out the additions made in the heterosexual person sector. The point here is that if African societies and their authorities were bolder and more than than open-minded about homosexuality, and invested resources in dealing with Aids among gays, then we would have got made more progress.

I share the position that, at the end of the day, in sexual behaviour, just like in other societal activity like imbibing and eating, Africa is not much different than the West. So while we are hysterically hostile to cheery people, the lone thing that have achieved is to drive them underground. In reality, we could have got nearly as many cheery people in Africa, as in the West, who knows?

As person who is familiar with the Republic Of Senegal survey of homosexuals and Aids told me: "The people who will profit most from having Aids consciousness for cheery work force in Africa, could well be their wives and girlfriends".