At any occasion where the President addresses any group of the UPDF, he has not missed reminding them about the danger of the deadly HIV/Aids.

As a result, the High Command also passed a resolution that any gathering of UPDF officers and men to be addressed by any superior, be it a meeting, general assembly or otherwise, HIV/Aids should form part of the agenda. In fact, health issues and Aids have become a command responsibility.

Some people may argue that by now it may not be very necessary to continue talking about Aids since almost the whole population, old and young have basically known about it. But wait a minute; over 2000 years since Jesus Christ lived on earth, the evangelists and the clergy still remind us about the importance of living according to the teachings of Jesus and accepting Him as our life and saviour from the yoke of sin.

Now, for Aids, we are talking about barely three decades of official record, the first case having been diagnosed in USA in 1981 and Uganda being among the first hard-hit countries with the first case being identified in the country in 1982 along L. Victoria shores in Rakai.

According to the November 2007epidemiological update, UNAIDS estimates that globally 33.2 million children and adults are living with HIV/Aids while 2.5 million new infections and 2.1 million deaths occurred in 2007 alone.

There are regional variances in HIV prevalence globally. Sub-Saharan Africa, where Uganda lies, bears the heaviest burden of the epidemic accounting for 68 per cent of those living with HIV/Aids globally while about 76 per cent of the Aids related deaths in 2007 alone occurred in this region.

In Uganda, superstitions and witchcraft characterised the initial response from communities amidst lack of clear government response to HIV/Aids. Consequently, the pandemic progressed very fast to all parts of the country and by end of 1992, the national prevalence rate was estimated at 18.3 per cent with some centres registering rates above 30 per cent.

This was followed by a period of steady decline in prevalence rates from the mid 1990s to 2002 to around 6 per cent, attributed to favourable prevention policies of government and President Museveni's outright campaign against the scourge.

Since 1982 when the country's first HIV cases were detected, cumulatively about 2.6 million Ugandans have been infected and 1.6 million have died of Aids-related illnesses including 76,000 in 2005 alone. For many years, Aids has been and is still a leading cause of adult disease and deaths. It is the fourth leading cause of under-5 mortality, affecting the realisation of MDGs.

Adult life expectancy currently is at 48.9 years (50 years for females and 48 years for males) yet it is projected to have been 56.9 years without Aids. Aids is cited among the leading causes of poverty in the country. So we are still badly off to say the least.

The real challenge with Aids however is the lack of voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) so that people know their sero-status and access treatment early enough. This is worsened when actually the cowards are the victims.

It means they will be in the dark, cannot get treatment and therefore will not live long. Some people also relating to their past behaviour simply assume that they are infected and therefore think it is a waste of time to test. This is dangerous because such categories actually end up infecting themselves instead.

Secondly it is important to have good counselling services to treat stigma of the infected and encourage them to live positively on ARV therapy. The ARV therapy has however also caused recklessness among some sections of the population because they know they will not die quickly after all.

Whereas abstinence, faithfulness and use of condoms (ABC) has undoubtedly saved many lives, more effort should now be directed at convincing people to take voluntary tests.

Maj. Ankunda is the Defence and Army Spokesman