Stakeholders root for new strategies to curb HIV infections
The country's Epi-data shows that adolescents and young people have persistently contributed about 43% of the new HIV infections from 2010 to 2023.
Officials from Ministry of health Uganda AIDS Commission and UNESCO chatting after the meeting. (Photos by Agnes Kyotalengerire)
Agnes Kyotalengerire
Journalist @New Vision
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The Government and development partners have made significant investments towards combating HIV among Adolescent Girls and Young Women (AGYW) and their male partners.
Despite this, the target of reducing new HIV infections among AGYW is not being realised. The country's Epi-data shows that adolescents and young people have persistently contributed about 43% of the new HIV infections from 2010 to 2023.
In the bid to curb new HIV infections, the Uganda AIDS Commission (UAC) together with development partners are conducting training on Adaptive Leadership Framework for key stakeholders with a focus on the adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) HIV response programme in Uganda.
This training is being delivered by Prof. Farayi Chipungu and a team who are based at the Harvard Kennedy School of Governance, and also work with Veneka Partners LLC.
The three-day training will end on March 5, 2025, at the Imperial Resort Beach Hotel in Entebbe.
Countries such as Zambia that have successfully reduced the number of new HIV infections among the AGYW, utilised the Adaptive Leadership Framework model.
This model augments the already existing HIV prevention technical approaches in addressing health challenges among young persons. It enables those working with adolescents to achieve positive cultural and value shifts, providing a nurturing and emotional holding environment for young persons and increasing the responsibility of those stakeholders in the ecosystem of adolescent health.
Uganda AIDS Commission speaks
The head of HIV prevention at Uganda AIDS Commission (UAC), Dr Daniel Byamukama, said the agency is in the process of reviewing the adolescent girls and young women programming.
Byamukama said they were not satisfied with the way the programme was working and have started the review.
Officials from Uganda AIDS Commission and Harvard Kennedy School of Governance, chat during the meeting.
“The temptation was to get back into the old thinking frameworks. So, we really wanted something that challenges us to think outside the box. A framework that challenges us to change the way things have always done. And we were introduced to the adaptive leadership framework,” he said.
Byamukama is optimistic that adaptive leadership will create an impact so that the response that has stagnated for so long can start to produce different results.
The director Planning and Strategic Information at Uganda AIDS Commission, Dr Vincent Bagambe, said this is one of the transformations we need to undertake in order to move towards attaining the Presidential Fast Track goals of ending HIV by 2030.
HIV burden
The Epi-data country estimates for December 2023, reveal that HIV prevalence among the adult population (15-49 years) has continued to decline, now at 5.1% from 5.5% in 2020.
The prevalence is still higher among women (15 to 49 years) at 6.6% compared to the men in the same age bracket at 3.6%, according to the annual Joint AIDS Review Report 2023/2024.
New HIV infections have also continued to decline, although not fast enough especially among young people. For instance, adolescents and young women are bearing 30% of the burden of new HIV infections.
In 2020, the country was registering 21,000 AIDS-related deaths, which is a slight reduction to 20,000 for June 2024, against the 2025 target of 10800.
An estimated 1.492,410 people were living with HIV as of December 2023, and of those, there are more women than men living with HIV.
Overall there has been a declining trend in new HIV infections from 46,000 in 2020 to 38,000 in 2023. Worth noting, that the majority were adolescent girls and women contributing about 30% of the new infections.