Kagera.org

[greg]

The International Aids Conference is currently going on in Toronto this week.

What actions do you wish to see come out off this conference? What do you think are the most specific problems relating to AIDS in the Kagera region?

Personally I think that education and anti-stigmatizing (ok, that's not a word but you get the point) seem to still be big issues within Kagera. I am no means an expert on this since I did not get involved in the heath sector during my time in the region, but it seemed to me that notions of individual heath as well as safe sex were not very evident. Now maybe things are a little more open within the Tanzanian community as are not as aparent to a mzungu, but for example it was several months before I realized that comdoms were even available in Bukoba shops. It was only once I asked a friend about it, curious as to their aparent absence that I was told that, most shops do carry them, just hidden under the counters.

What do you think? Should comdoms be available at dukas, next to the blue bandi, nedo and majo chupa ndogo?

What other aspects of prevention do you think are important to combating AIDS in Kagera, Tanzania and the developing world in general?

[MILLSWHANAU]

Greg this is a really sticky issue.
Like you I am no expert, and having not even been to Kagera I have little to say on the spicific factors involving HIV/AIDS in that region.
However, I will say that discusion on this issue will not be as simple as we may first deduce. Obviously each person that reads the questions you have asked will approach them with their own personal "World View" which has been formed by their own cultural, religious and personal experiences.
Given that, it may be prudent to explore the HIV/AIDS issue from all avenues, not just a secular western one.
Maybe telling a teenager in Kagera that in order for him not to die from AIDS he should use a condom, might be like telling a teenager from Mecca that in order to grow up big and strong he must eat pork? I don't know?
Perhaps the question to get things started should be along the lines of the second question you asked:

[robert]

Well i am so delighted that people can be able to chat about my home region as far distance as where you guys are, the issue of HIV/AIDS in Bukoba is no different from anyother places in the country. speaking specifically every family in Bukoba has experienced the lost of a brother, sister, father ,mother or any close family . but yet this endemic still dwells in the region in high incidence. i have not done any research or pass through any documentary review, but my own analysis suggests the following could be the causative factors:
1st: lack of proper education on the transimission of hiv/aids.this is especially occuring to the villages where means of communication is poor and less sensitization effort is applied.
2nd: the attitude which most youngester have that, manhood is expressed through sex anmd womanhood is dating a man. this normally lead to men/women shopping which easily spreads the infection.
3rd: i beliave the media plays a big part in the spread than in the prevention side, most of our programms do not sensitize youth to self awereness instead drain them into sex. this includes the newespapers, the TV PROGRAMMS and others.
The total programm of life that the yougster in bukoba is tought to live plays a big contribution.
Therefore more resources and emphasis should be put on education,creation of awerness of the disease,and VCT programms to be taken to the health centers in the villages. this can atleast solve the problem or reduce the incidence.

[MILLSWHANAU]

Hi Greg!
Hey this is probably been a long time coming.
It will be interesting to hear what people in Kagera think of it once it has been...

http://www.dailynews-tsn.com/page.php?id=8619

HIV awareness campaign for Kagera
MEDDY MULISA in Bukoba
Daily News; Thursday,September 13, 2007 @00:03

A TOTAL of 253,899 Kagera residents are expected to participate in the National Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT) campaign to be held here between September 22 and November 22, this year.

The Kagera Regional Medical Officer (RMO), Dr Pius Tubeti, told the Primary Health Committee (PHC) here that the number represents 20 per cent of those aged above 15 years.

He said the campaign would help break the long silence and open a national dialogue among all social classes. He said only about 15 per cent of Tanzanians have tested for the HIV status since the service started over ten years ago.

He said many people had not sought the service for lack of awareness and fear due to stigma surrounding the disease. He pointed out that a person living with HIV could take many years without showing the symptoms of disease, the period he said could spread the disease to other people unknowingly or be exposed to new infections.

Dr Tubeti was optimistic that the VCT campaign would save many lives because people who will find themselves to be negative would take necessary precautions not to be infected while those found positive would get the right information on how to prevent spreading it or contracting new infections.

He called upon all residents in the region to turn up for the service which will be provided free of charge at 260 centres that have been set up.
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Mungu akubariki!
From Simon

[Kabendera]

Hello, this is the story i wrote the last time i was in Kagera three years ago.

By Erick Kabendera

Kagera-In early 1980s when the first case of Aids was reported in the country, they emerged from Kagera region in North West Tanzania.
Nobody knew exactly what the first patients were suffering from. Those who were thin and generally showed signs of poor health were particularly feared and nobody wanted to be associated with them. Their stories travelled from village to village like bush fire.
Stigma made these sick people feel bad and they feared dying alone. Most, especially men, resorted to hiding themselves in bushes and ambushed passers-by and spit into their mouths so as to pass on their disease.

the disease was Aids. Unfounded claims about the origin of the virus were heard in villages. It was christened 'Juliana' in Tanzania and in the neighbouring Uganda, 'Slim'.

Although many theories emerged, still the number of people who developed Aids were unknown, according to different sources. Nevertheless, nobody knew which theory was true.

The first speculation was that Hutu migrant workers from Burundi and Rwanda were carriers of the virus. In the early 1960s, hundreds of thousands of Tutsi refugees from Butare and Nyanza fled ethnic violence in Rwanda and settled in Kagera.

Another theory was that (from who?) the 1978 Kagera contributed to the transmission of the epidemic. Seven thousand men from the 207th Tanzanian brigade camped beside the village of Bugandika allegedly raped women there and came into contact with the disease And the list continues.

Since then, Aids spread from one village after another, killing people. Children like John Ndibalema who was hardly three years then were left orphans later and many more assumed roles once occupied by their dead fathers and mothers.
Now at 30, he sits outside his home quietly where he lives alone, after a long day working in the banana plantation he inherited from his deceased father. The house is at Kigarama village in Kanyigo ward. This is one of the villages that were severely hit by Aids in the 1980 when it first hit the country.
Michael Ndibalema was his father and he died in 2000 of Aids.
As soon as his first wife Angelina died symptoms of Aids in 1996, Michael hurriedly married another woman.
"She was ahead of me by one class in Primary School. I was surprised when I heard my father was getting married to her," he says.
Relatives and some other villagers protested saying the woman was too young to be his wife. They feared that he would infect her with the virus since everyone believed his wife had died of Aids.
Soon after, she fled and her whereabouts were not known for many years. Suddenly, she re-emerged in the village but where she had been remained unknown. There were rumours of a deceased husband in Mwanza where she was suspected to have been living.
After his father's death, his two brothers and a sister decided to migrate to Bukoba urban. He has had no contact with them. "I didn't want to leave this farm and house alone; I decided to stay," he says.


Ndibalema was probably very young when Aids started but he says his father might have contracted the virus as he went about his cloths business, which involved him pedalling from village to village and spending many nights away from home.
Ndibalema says he lost more than 10 relatives to Aids, relatives whose remains lay in the family graveyard near his home.
As a result of losing a relative who was supposed to support him through school, his dreams of becoming a doctor were dropped and he became a peasant immediately after finishing primary school at Kigarama Primary School.
Just behind his home is where the family eternal resting place is located. The grave of her father, mother and stepmother are all here. His cousin and another distant are also buried in two other graves.
Here and in other villages I visited, it is easy for the people to tell you who died of Aids, as long as it was not a relative of theirs. They would tell you that their sons and daughters were bewitched even when they had Aids. That is why most would take their sick children to the witch doctors instead of the hospitals.
In the early 1980s, according to Dr Pius Tubei who is the Kagera Regional Medical Officer, the situation was worse in Kanyigo, a ward in Misenyi district, which recent statistics show that 3.2 percent of its people are currently living with HIV/Aids. The regional prevalence rate at the moment stands at 3.7 percent, almost half the national rate of 7 percent.
But, says Dr Tubei, the HVI/Aids prevalence rate stood at 18 percent in 1987 in the region before it began falling all the way to 3.7 percent where it has remained since 2004.
By 1990, it was estimated that 17 percent of Kagera urban population and five percent of its rural population were HIV infected compared to a 2.5 percent national rate.
During the just concluded national campaign for HIV voluntarly testing which was spearheaded by the president, It was expected that about 22,000 people would turn up for voluntary counselling but 17,888 showed up and 579 of them were positive.
Jonas Kawamala, 52, a resident of Bunazi village had an uncle, John Kishwaga, who was a witch doctor. Many Aids patients were taken to him for treatment and he sometimes slept with his female patients.
Then Kishwaga showed symptoms of HIV/Aids before he died. "Most of us knew that he had Aids because he had admitted on numerous cases to have slept with his patients who later died. Besides, some patients gave testimonies after his death."
Currently, more than 95 percent of Kagera residents are informed about, according to figures from Tanzania Red Cross Society. The infection rate has gone down since then, thanks to different campaigns that have increased HIV/Aids awareness.
Many organisation with different interventions started working here in the early 1990s and most penetrated into the interior where their services were needed the most.
In Bunazi, programmes like 'Mama na Mtoto' (Mother and Child) have been started.
Aids prevalence rate has gone down compared to the past.
The practice of wife inheritance has been discouraged and since 1993 the campaign has far been extended to schools where HIV/Aids subject and peer education have been introduced.
Apart from the different intervention, there are still factors such as stigma which are still a problem. The number of sexual partners and alcohol consumption have also remained an obstacle towards total HIV/Aids eradication.
More than 30 years now since the outbreak, people are still singing songs about the fresh wounds that were left by AIDS although the war on AIDS is more than won.

[kamala]

http://www.garynull.com/Documents/Continuum/LookingFromInside.htm
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The longest journey starts with the first step - Chinese
If you do not stand for something, you will fall for anything. - Unknown

[george9]

hi nice site i like it a lot

[george9]

Kagera Region is located in the northwestern corner of Tanzania. Bukoba, Kagera Region's capital, is a fast growing town situated on the shore of Lake Victoria. Bukoba lies only 1 degree south of the Equator and is Tanzania's second largest port on the lake. The region neighbors Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi and lies across the lake from Kenya. You may arrive in Kagera by air from Mwanza, road from Rwanda or Uganda or by ferry from Mwanza. also get some pills at Online Pharmacy . The regional commissioner of the Kagera Region is General T. Kiwelu Kagera Region is situated in the northwestern corner of Tanzania. The regional capital is Bukoba Town, which is about 1,500 km from Dar es Salaam by road. Kagera Region shares borders with Uganda to the north, Rwanda and Burundi to the west, the Kigoma Region and Mwanza Regions to the south and Lake Victoria to the East
Kagera Region lies just South of the equator between 1°00' and 2°45' south latitudes. Longitudinally it lies between 30°25' and 32°40' east of Greenwich. This includes a large part of the waters of Lake Victoria. Kagera Region covers a total area of 40,838 km². Out of the total area, 28,953 km². is land and 11,885 km². is covered by waters of Lake Victoria, Lakes Ikimba, Burigi, and Ngono and Kagera rivers.