Anti-gay bill may cost Uganda research institution

(AFP) 

KAMPALA — Uganda may lose the chance of hosting a major AIDS research institution if it passes an anti-homosexual bill that seeks to significantly curtail gay rights, a UN official said Monday.

United Nations and Ugandan health officials announced that the Geneva-based African AIDS Vaccine Programme (AAVP) will be shifted to Entebbe during an AAVP conference that began in Kampala Monday.

The move is to boost Africa's participation in AIDS vaccine research.

"Criminalising adult consensual sex is not only a human rights issue, it goes against a good HIV strategy," said Catherine Hankins, the chief scientific advisor for UNAIDS, which alongside the World Health Organisation backs the AAVP.

"If the bill passes, UNAIDS and WHO would have to decide what happens and to see whether this is an appropriate place," she told AFP.

Uganda's AIDS Commission director Kihumuro Apuuli welcomed UN's selection of Entebbe as the AAVP headquarters, but has been silent about the bill, which has been widely condemned by human rights and public health officials.

But recently Apuuli said men who have sex with men were not a priority group in Uganda's fight against HIV.

"You go back to France and tell them that in Uganda we have limited resources and have to allocate resources to areas of need," he told AFP.

He said that gays were responsible for less than one percent of new infections in 2008.

Sigh, any wonder that in Uganda there is no HIV prevention programme for gay Ugandan men? The head of the Uganda AIDS Commission is homophobic.

Well, there goes that.

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