Uganda: Activists protest LGBTI exclusion from healthcare access
A group of Uganda gay rights activists have protested steps by the government to ‘intentionally delete’ LGBTI from accessing vital health services for Most At Risk Population Groups (MARPS) in a national health policy soon to be launched.
The policy, the National Health Sector Strategic Plan III is to be launched before the end of November this year.
Currently, the MARPS in Ugandan policy documents include sex workers, inmates, uniformed personnel, internally displaced persons and migrants.
The stigma attached to same sex relationships in Uganda force many gays underground, failing to seek treatment and safer sex practices.
The group, Uganda Health and Science Press Association (UHSPA-Uganda), a network of groups and individuals working to mainstream minority rights in Uganda’s Public Health Policies and laws has written to the Ministry of Health to protest the exclusion.
“We are concerned about the omission/ exclusion of sexual minorities from accessing vital health services in the soon to be launched Health Sector Strategic Plan III,” Mr Kikonyogo Kivumbi, the UHSPA Executive Director said in a November 7th letter. The letter copied to the Uganda Aids Commission and the Uganda Human Rights Commission called on the Uganda government to honour its international Human Rights Obligations.
“Uganda as a current member of the United Nations Human Rights Council cannot afford to jubilate the vulnerability of some sections of its population by keeping them off the health access radar,” the letter noted. It cited a recent report to the United Nations General Special Session Report for Uganda (UNGASS Report 2010) which noted that Uganda had no intervention for LGBTI access to HIV/AIDS prevention.
THE IMPLICATIONS FOR THIS DISCRIMINATION
The Health Sector Strategic Plan III runs for the next five years, with a possible extension for another five years. It will guide the distribution and access to donor and public resources in the management of health in Uganda. Mr Kivumbi said the HSSPIII is an important opportunity for LGBTI members to be afforded senstisation, awareness creation and information on HIV/AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infection. ‘A number of gay men do not identify themselves as gay. They have heterosexual relationships, but think they can only get HIV infection in heterosexual relations,’ Kivumbi said.
He noted that there was a deliberate danger in the management of HIV/AIDS if people in same sex relationships do not et access to information and senstisation on treatment and safer sex.
The letter called on the Uganda government to honour its commitments to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights state parties to non discrimination to health.
“The right to health which HSSPIII intends to omit for sexual minorities is closely related to and dependent upon the realisation of other human rights as contained in the International Bill of Rights. By virtue of article 2.2 and article 3 of the ICESCR, the covenant proscribes any discrimination in access to health care and underlying determinants of health, as well as to means and entitlements for their procurement,” the letter reading parts.
Read the full letter here.
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