Has Uganda bred a generation hooked on abstinence?

By Joachim Buwembo

If all goes according to plan, there will be no HIV/Aids in Uganda in the next 10 to 20 years; those with the virus will have died out while those without will not have picked it up. At least that is the theory. 

But it is a theory that is close to becoming practice, a case of a campaign that may have proved too successful. It all started in the early 1990s, with the introduction of the "window of hope' concept. It was really simple; so simple that it is no wonder it has been too successful. The idea was that there was a section of the population that was too young to have got HIV via sex and yet too old to still be alive if they had contracted it up at birth from infected mothers. 

These were children between the ages of 9 and 15. So the campaigns urging people to abstain from sex until marriage targeted them and those coming after them. Since all blood for transfusion is now screened and mother-to-child transmission prevention treatments are now available free of charge, anybody below the age of 25 has no business getting HIV in Uganda - at least in theory. Ten years later, the results are out. 

A recent survey showed that a third of university students are still virgins. And we would like to assume that those who aren't have been practicing safe sex. Considering that the university has the most permissive environment in the country, we can safely say that the rate of virginity is even higher outside it. 

BUT THAT is not all. Serious incentives for maintaining virginity have started. Kayunga district, which is quite near Kampala city, has announced bursaries for university education for girls who are still virgins. 

With over 30 per cent of those at campus already qualifying, we hope the district budget will not all go to girls' university education. There is more. Campaign adverts on radio have started attacking what they call cross-generational sex. 

They target men who go for girls of their daughters' age, and enact situations of embarrassment where men find their daughters in the groups they are poaching on. The objective of the campaigns is to keep people above 25 from having sex with those below that age. Let the old people keep their HIV to themselves, or something to that effect. 

And it has worked. But not everybody is celebrating. The very medical people who have been at the forefront of combating the spread of HIV are now voicing their concern over the success of the gospel of abstention.

The National Co-ordinator for HIV Counselling and Testing, Dr Zainab Akol, recently hit the headlines when she said that more young people are postponing marriage because they have got used to living without partners and without sex. As a result, our women are being exposed to higher risks when they have to bear children at a late age. 

Akole summed up the paradox thus: People know when not to get married but there is no norm on when to get married. These recent revelations must have come as a rude shock to President Yoweri Museveni, Kabaka Ronald Mutebi and other local leaders like Luwero District Chairman and freedom fighter Al Hajji Abdul Nadduli, who have been calling for a higher population in order to create a viable market, workforce, nation and so on. 

At this rate, Uganda may have to adopt policies like those in France and some other countries where couples are given subsidies to have children.

Joachim Buwembo is managing editor of The Monitor of Kampala. 

E-mail: jbuwembo@monitor.co.ug