Boston Globe Column Compares Resources for HIV/AIDS, Diabetes in Uganda

Resources to treat patients living with diabetes in Uganda pale in comparison to HIV/AIDS resources, Boston Globe columnist Derrick Jackson discovered during a recent trip to the city of Mbarara, Uganda, six hours southwest of the capital city of Kampala. In his column, Jackson writes that even though "[t]he World Health Organization has warned that diabetes, obesity, hypertension, and other diseases of development are well on their way to becoming entrenched worldwide," stark difference exist between the Mbarara HIV-AIDS clinic, with its "immaculate, brightly lit labs with blood-sampling equipment and computer data stations worthy of a Boston hospital" and the local diabetes clinic, where the clinic head Bitekyerezo Medaro said patients sleep in the grass and have said they would prefer to have HIV so that their treatment would be free. "When I see the treatment for HIV, I become inspired as to what we can do," Medaro said. "When I see what we have for diabetes, I feel defeated" (Jackson, Boston Globe, 6/16).

Back to other news for June 2009