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AIDS
and Culture: An ambivalent correlation?
Birungi
Charles
Diocesan
HIV/AIDS Focal Point
Hoima
Catholic Diocese
Uganda
Although Uganda is one of the
earliest AIDS success stories and is widely recognized for lowering HIV
incidence, traditional cultural practices such as widow inheritance,
polygamy, wife sharing and wife replacement, blood brotherhood, treatment
for barrenness and circumcision rituals create and environment conducive
for the spread of HIV. Other cultural factors that perpetuate HIV
infection include inadequate family life education and life skills
training and communication, because parents and other adults often avoid
talking to young people about sex
However, to date communities
have begun to recognize the reality of HIV/AIDS and have revised some of
their cultural practices that increase the chance of infection. Never the
less, criminalisation and stigmatization of certain sexual practices like
commercial sex work, can contribute to person’s vulnerability to HIV and
their inability to access services and information. A number of cultural
practices such as widow inheritance, wife sharing, and spontaneous sex
during rituals has slowly faded away. For instance, the widow inheritance
practice is changing so that widows are inherited with no sexual
obligations and female genital mutilation cutting are changing to the use
of knives provided by those undergoing the procedure.
Finally, highly held cultural
values such as abstinence (primary and secondary), faithfulness, virginity
and the sacredness of life, among others, are at play to prevent further
spread of the HIV/AIDS epidemic while at the same time mitigating the
effects of the epidemic.
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