Indeed! Therein lies the crucial issue in dealing with any issue: human rights, disease prevention/treamtment, famine, environmental degredation, etc., etc.

We live in a global ‘community’ and are interdependent on one another, either directly (aid funding, research) or indirectly (disease spread through global migration). Ignoring this fact is tantamount to ‘suicide’, economically, culturally and literally. It really has less to do with ‘democracy’ as it does with accepting our ‘humanness’.

Unfortunately, struggling countries and western powerhouses alike often ignore the symbiotic relationship, preferring to bury their heads in ignorance or self-righteousness/ arrogance.

The sooner we realize we are ‘in this together’, the sooner we’ll find common ground and begin to find solutions.

Perhaps the Ugandan leaders are coming to their senses……

The author is blunt about the story in the ground:

“So many people are being supported by America,” Ms. Kamukama, 28, says mournfully. “Can they not help me as well?”

The answer increasingly is no. Uganda is the first and most obvious example of how the war on global AIDS is falling apart.

The global recession has hit donors hard, and aid organizations that supply medicine and medical care for AIDS and other killer diseases in Africa such as pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, measles and tetanus have seen funding go flat. Such funding would have to triple just to stay even with the infection rate for AIDS alone.

Uganda is a microcosm of that: 500,000 need treatment, 200,000 are getting it, but each year, an additional 110,000 are infected.

Ugandan authorities I believe are beginning to realize that they have a real problem on their hands and they very much need the world to continue to support efforts in their country to help with the fight against a host of devastating diseases. The reality is however that the world’s donors are moving away from treatment of AIDS patients because it is too expensive.

According to the Uganda AIDS Commission, the lifetime bill for treating one Ugandan AIDS patient, counting drugs, tests and medical salaries, is $11,500.

Much outcry against the “kill the gays” bill has been heard coming from the United States. Even some of the US religious leaders that provoked the recent anti-gay protests and rallies in Uganda are backpedaling. It matters what people in the US think, and the Ugandan government knows it is playing a dangerous game of chicken.

American taxpayers have been particularly generous to Uganda, paying for 88 percent of its drugs; Ugandans know it.

Uganda cannot afford to alienate the world that it so desperately depends on for aid. All of those here in the US and elsewhere in the world that have been calling for Uganda to be “cut off” from aid if the country should decide to pass the “kill the gays bill” have in a way been heard. It is not that alone, but any erosion or negative perception of Uganda and its neighbors will only make the situation worse. Smart leaders know that they need their partners in an increasingly interconnected world.