uhspauganda

Efforts to increase LGBTI people’s and sex workers’ involvement in planning Ugandan health services are not going smoothly, reports Ugandan correspondent Kikonyogo Kivumbi. ( 76crimes article)  An election to choose representatives of those key population groups was ruled invalid on Wednesday, Jan. 21. As a result, those groups still have no official representatives on the Ugandan health policy panel known as the Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM).   A new election is scheduled for Feb. 5. Representation for LGBTI people and sex workers is important because those groups suffer from a higher rate of HIV infections than the overall population. Among Ugandan men who have sex with men (MSM), the HIV infection rate is an estimated 12 to 33 percent, compared to 7.3 percent for all Ugandans. Uganda’s CCM oversees grants from the Global Fund (the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria), which finances many of Uganda’s anti-AIDS efforts. CCM’s exist in every country that a