Hope Mafaranga

Flavia Kisembo, 70, is a happy woman today. In 2002, Kisembo was a miserable village grandmother as she considered the future of her remaining two HIV positive grand children. Kisembo had lost three of her children, a son and two daughters to HIV/AIDS. Some of her grandchildren also died from the same disease. When the second daughter died in 2001, she left three children, two boys and a girl with Kisembo.   “The girl died shortly after the mother’s death. The youngest boy who was about three years was getting sick so often and it was becoming a nightmare to manage his sickness,” Kisembo recollects. It only dawned on her when one of her neighbours, Rev. Ezra Musobozi who had visited her suggested they take the young boy for an HIV test. It turned out that David Nyakoojo was HIV positive. The elder boy too, was HIV positive. KIDA comes to the rescue Rev. Musobozi who is the founder of Kitojo Integrated Development Association (KIDA) offered to take care of the orphaned boys. His organi

Cancer patients struggle to survive By Hope Mafaranga In Uganda Cancer patients struggle to survive the disease and costs, however most cancers can be prevented and even cured if detected early and treatment made available. But frequent drug stock-outs and an ill-equipped health system mean many patients cannot afford the high cost of treatment, many end up dying. Once a rare disease, cancers of various kinds are emerging to be a big killer in Uganda. Despite this threat, many of these cancers are either not getting treated or costing huge sums of money. His breath was slow and desperate, taking every successful breath as if it were his last. Early this month, Ronald Ahwera joined the agony queue at the Mulago Cancer Institute, the only cancer facility in a country of 34 million people. Funding to the health sector, most of it from foreign donors, largely goes to three diseases namely HIV/Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria. So cancer patients like Ahwera are paying a heavy price. He had a

A study on disasters on crop diversity concluded By Hope Mafaranga 20, November 2011 In Uganda A first study to investigate in detail the effects of disasters on crop diversity and its recovery has been concluded with a combined agronomic observations of looking at the seeds’ colour, size, pattern, and shape with biotechnology tools to determine the seeds’ genetic makeup. Seeds of local crop varieties must be included in relief-seed packages distributed to small-scale farmers after natural calamities if indigenous agricultural diversity is to rebound faster. Dr Morag Ferguson, a molecular biologist with IITA and one of the study’s lead researchers, says farmers in Africa traditionally grow many crops and several varieties of each crop on the same plot of land to cope with unforeseen economic or environmental instabilities. He said that agricultural relief efforts should also capitalize on existing social networks to distribute seeds more effectively and efficiently. These are among the

Uganda ranked among the countries with high TB rate By Hope Mafaranga November 20, 2011 In Kampala Uganda is ranked the 16th among the 22 high burden countries with 102,000 new cases of Tuberculosis (TB) that occurs in the country every year. The National Tuberculosis and Leprosy Programmes Manager Dr Francis Adatu disclosed that at the end of 2010, 45,546 TB new cases were identified in Uganda and of these 54 percent were confirmed to be HIV positive. He added that   330 out of 100,000 people get infected per year in every constituency , adding that   out of 100, 000 people infected by TB, 93 die and the number has been accelerated by HIV/AIDS.   “TB is the single leading killer of people living with HIV. We must detect, treat and cure TB so that people living with HIV/AIDS can live longer,” he said. He said that TB affects economically active age group of between 15-55 years which he said has also affected the social and economic development of the country.   TB is air borne disease