HIV/AIDS

By Andrew Besi

Patient Zero in the United States did not go peacefully. His fragile 16-year-old body riddled, among others, with rare cancerous lesions known as Kaposi’s sarcoma - a skin disease found in elderly men descended from the Mediterranean.

But Robert Rayford - for long referred to as Robert R - was not the first human to suffer from this unknown but very infectious and fatal viral infection.

By Desire K Amanya

“He who commits adultery lacks sense; he who does it destroys himself.”

Twenty-two years ago, on the 13th Day of April, at the Kampala Sheraton Hotel, Philly Bongole Lutaaya did a most unusual thing - publicly declaring that he was afflicted with HIV/AIDS.

“Fellow comrades of Uganda,” he said, “it is with utmost regret that today I inform you that the sickness bothering me has been diagnosed as AIDS. Surely, this will no doubt be a shock, but it is true; I am one of the victims of this dreaded disease, AIDS.”

Magezi Kiriinjju

In the 1980s when Dr. Luc Montagnier of Pasteur Institute, a French research organization was busy feuding with Dr. Robert Gallo of the American National Cancer Institute over who found the virus that causes Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), Ugandans were grappling with what had befallen them. A strange ailment was wrecking havoc on communities leaving entire families wiped out, villages abandoned, orphans and old people helpless, the medical community and politicians bewildered.