BBC examines 'huge imbalance' between funding for HIV/AIDS, other health needs in Uganda

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Oct 6 2009

The BBC examines the balance between funding for HIV/AIDS and for the broader health system and other diseases in Uganda.

According to the BBC, organizations addressing HIV/AIDS in Uganda receive support, in part, from PEPFAR, adding, "In 2008 alone, funding from PEPFAR reached $283.6 million - an amount which easily exceeds the entire annual budget for Uganda's ministry of health."

"Many people in the West believe that all Africans are impoverished and infected with HIV" even though "many countries have stable HIV statistics of under 3%," Daniel Halperin, of Harvard, said. "But in spite of this, the vast majority of support, particularly from the U.S., is given specifically to the war on AIDS," the BBC writes.

According to the news service, Premila Bartlett, PEPFAR's coordinator in Uganda, said that the program is trying to help fix the country's health system which "in many cases is in pieces" (Villadsen, 10/4).

This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.