Uganda's proposed anti-homosexuality legislation would inhibit health care access

Dec 12 2012

The Center for Global Health Policy's "Science Speaks" blog examines the potential impacts of a proposed anti-homosexuality bill in Uganda, writing that the bill "would stand as an obstacle to both access to health care and to the ability of health care providers to even offer services," making prevention of "the bill's passage a matter of life and death, as well as of rights and dignity." According to the blog, "The record of Uganda's HIV fight, once hailed as model and a success story, now showing the most alarming reverses in Africa, stands as testament to what happens to health responses in a setting where science, human rights, and the realities of the impact of discriminatory laws are ignored. In all of those, of course, Uganda is far from alone, raising the question of what the world's greatest united humanitarian effort, the work to treat and prevent the spread of HIV, could achieve when those issues are addressed." The blog briefly examines other countries' anti-sodomy laws and proposed anti-homosexuality legislation (Barton, 12/10).