Global Fund rushes HIV drugs to Uganda amid critical shortage

The Global Fund, a partnership that sends HIV drugs to poor countries, says it plans to send a 12-month advance supply of antiretroviral therapy to Uganda, after the East African country ran out three months before the end of last year. Health activists say about 240,000 patients on publicly funded treatment programmes were affected by the shortage, which began last September, forcing them to modify their treatments or stop altogether. Private-sector clinics were not affected.

The government needs to mobilize resources to fill the gaps and find a long-term solution.

Seth Faison, of the Global Fund

Seth Faison of the FUnd said the first consignment of the new supply would arrive in Uganda in February. But he acknowledged that front-loading the delivery of drugs, while not increasing the total amount of drugs it sends, was a “short-term solution”. The Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a public-private partnership set up in 2002 which has made impressive progress in tackling epidemics of those three deadly infectious diseases. Uganda has made dramatic gains against HIV/AIDS, bringing the infection rate down from about 18.5 percent in 1992, according to United Nations figures.

No ARVs means death. If you have a virus that kills you and you don’t get treatment, you die.

Joshua Wamboga, who heads the Uganda Network of AIDS Service Organisations

Uganda HIV