Ugandan AIDS professionals to speak

Two workers on the front lines of the AIDS crisis in Uganda will hold an information discussion on the subject Tuesday, Aug. 9 at UW–Madison.

Dr. Addy Kekitiinwa is a pediatrician at and director of the Mulago Hospital in Kampala. Esther Kangabbe is a social worker at the hospital. Their clinic is the largest AIDS facility in Uganda.

Kekitiinwa reports that many of the children her clinic treats have lost at least one parent to AIDS. Often the children are so poor that the food packages supplied to the clinic by international nonprofit organizations provide powerful incentives for attending the clinic consistently, although adherence to treatment remains a problem, she says.

“Although we are now able to supply drugs to keep AIDS in check, many other factors affect the success rate,” she says.

Kekitiinwa and Kangabbe will speak on Tuesday, Aug. 9 at noon in 206 Ingraham Hall. The discussion is free, open to the public and presented by the UW–Madison African Studies program. For more information, contact Eileen McNamara, (608) 262-4461, emcnamar@wisc.edu.