Africa
Rubrema Ruranga
Facing AIDS with Style
In the war on AIDS, sub-Saharan Africa is a body-strewn battlefield. The disease is thought to have killed 31 million people worldwide, leaving 34 million infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The World Health Organization estimates 5 million people are infected each year.
Africa bears the brunt of this terrible toll. Ignorance of—and silence about—sexual transmission is partly responsible, but over the past decade, a few HIV/AIDS sufferers have turned their own stories into lessons, and they may be having an effect.
In Uganda, Major Rubrema Ruranga is an anti-AIDS campaigner who publicly identifies himself as HIV-positive. Ruranga “dresses sharply, has a wonderful sense of humor, a little money, and a glossy, prosperous-looking skin,” reported Nairobi’s independent East African, describing his talk to a Ugandan audience.
“He usually teases his female audience thus: ‘If I came up to you, looking as good as I do, and I flash you my smile, would you think I was HIV-positive?’ ”
Their demurrals are signs of both the problem and progress toward minimizing the spread of the national health catastrophe in Uganda. Discussion of sex was long a cultural taboo, but spokespeople such as Ruranga have improved public-health education, and Uganda’s infection rate has fallen, from 17 percent of the population to 6 percent.
“We have acknowledged that AIDS is a problem,” Ruranga tells Berlin’s leftist taz. The paper credits Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni with knowing 15 years ago that the disease would have an impact, “at a time when other African states were still considering AIDS a non-African perversion.”
While infection rates are still high, Uganda is less ravaged than many of its neighbors, such as South Africa and Zimbabwe, thanks in part to Ruranga’s warning: “So be careful, my friends.”
