HIV-positive inmates accommodated at Luzira Prison are requesting for a balanced diet to ensure they do not experience complications that come with poor feeding.

“While HIV-positive inmates who qualify for anti-retroviral treatment (ARV) receive it in time, authorities take little interest in ensuring they get a balanced diet as a result, we sometimes find it difficult to take ARVs due to poor feeding,” John  Abigaba says.

Lack of a balanced diet is affecting medication for inmates living positively behind bars.

“We are given ARVs as required, but the cornmeal and beans provided in jail doesn’t come close to the high protein diet recommended for HIV-positive patients. We sometimes end up throwing away the drugs for fear that we may experience more serious complications,” Abigaba says.

For a man whose state of health requires constant and proper feeding, Abigaba says even though inmates receive the required medication, there is a need for a supplementary diet for HIV-positive inmates, he recommends.

Abigaba wishes to have healthy meals from his family in Rakai, unfortunately, they are so far away that they cannot bring food for him.

“This has made the already appalling conditions of HIV-positive prisoners even worse when inmates throw away the ARVs given to them claiming the drugs may affect their lives because they are too strong to swallow when one is not properly fed,” he says.

Chairperson Luzira Prison’s Art Clinic Patrick Ndyomugenyi says: “In view of the fact that most prisoners are abandoned by their relatives, some have never been visited yet require a balanced diet, but cannot afford is why we request for support”.

“We hope and believe that any generous support towards these groups of people will help them to feel loved. It will boost the immune system and CD4 count for the HIV clients hence reducing opportunistic diseases among the clients,” Ndyomugenyi says.

The nutritional supplements required include silver fish (mukene), millet flour and soya flour rice, sugar, cooking oil, wheat flour and groundnuts.

State of the prisons system

Prison’s publicist Frank Baine says Uganda's Prisons currently accommodate over 70,000 inmates within its 249 units of these, over 2,000 prisoners are HIV positive. A total of 800 are in Luzira Prison alone are living with HIV but only 320 access ARVs.

“While prison’s department is required to cater for HIV-positive inmates, due to meager resources, we have no specific budget for feeding inmates on ARV, but those on treatment are provided with vegetables and eggs obtained from the prison farms,” Baine reveals.

Baine, however, refutes claims that prisoners are subjected to compulsory HIV testing noting that it’s optional. Testing is not mandatory; "We cannot go against the national policy. Prisons Service cannot force neither its staff nor prisoners to test for HIV," he says.

“Those found to be positive are referred to the inmate’s health facility for treatment and restricted from engaging in hard labour,” Baine states.

Higher HIV prevalence among women prisoners

A survey conducted under the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that while there is a possibility for male inmates to contract the disease, the  HIV prevalence is higher among female inmates since the majority come from peri-urban poor neighbourhoods where sex is a source of living, therefore, prone to transition.

The report indicates that the HIV prevalence in prisons stands at 12.7% which is 13% on average. The report discovered that female inmates had the highest prevalence rate of 13.5%, while that of their male counterparts was at 12.2%.

The 2013 survey on HIV/AIDS indicates that the national prevalence of HIV on average stands at 7.3% or 1.4 million Ugandans are HIV positive where men constitute 5.9 percent and 8.3 percent for women.

Regrettably, that of inmates stands at 13%, which is twice the national prevalence. 

The survey further showed that places that are highly populated in the country have higher prevalence rates