The butcher who turned his knife against AIDS

By Arthur Baguma

FROM his dressing to his office gear simplicity is a mark on him. William Salmond is down to earth and fondly refers to simplicity as a virtue of life.
At a tender age he started out as a butcher and delivery boy using a bicycle and a big basket as his tools.

Salmond vended newspapers on the streets and worked in a brewery and Parks Department during his school holidays.

Wearing a checked shirt and marching pair of Khaki trousers he strolls in his office holding a newspaper magazine which was published in 1991.

The lead story in the magazine was of the wife of Paul Michael Glaser, a Hollywood movie star. Elizabeth Glaser who was infected with the AIDS virus during a blood transfusion in 1988, unaware she passed it on to her children.

From her tragic story she spearheaded what became today’s Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric Aids Foundation operating in several countries including Uganda.

Photos and clippings of people who have changed the face and attitude of people towards HIV/AIDS hang prominently on the wall in his office.

The most prominent being the one of a Ugandan girl who addressed the US Congress about the problem of HIV/AIDS and children.

Salmond has become a household name in the AIDS fight. He was one of the pioneer directors of the AIDS Information Centre at the time when Uganda was waking up to the reality of HIV/AIDS.

He is currently the country director of Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, located in Nakasero.
Salmond’s office is a place of laughter, tears and commitment. From here, he overseas the planning and support to the born and un-born.

This is the head office of the Foundation which supports the work of the Ministry of Health in 27 districts and over 350 health facilities.

Salmond’s footprints in Uganda are as old as the history of the HIV-AIDS scourge. He is not your ordinary flamboyant white expatriate living in a Third World country.
And when he came to Uganda in the 80s, he carried with him this humility.

His name is familiar to many in the circles of HIV/AIDS fight across the world. He is very compassionate of children. Little wonder his inspiration is the HIV positive children he works with in Ariel Kids Clubs and in camps.

He says this year more than 300,000 pregnant women in 27 districts will receive their HIV routine counselling and testing and those who are HIV-positive (about 8% or 24,000) will receive the preventive medicine to ensure that their children remain free of HIV.

“Routine counselling and testing is a major breakthrough in our struggle. I think that routine counselling and testing should be made part of the entry requirements into university and marriage,” he suggests.

Salmond recalls the first days of HIV/AIDS which were full of fear and anxiety. “These were days of finding out your status and then waiting to die. There was no medicine.”

Salmond says people walked into a room at Bauman House got tested and received results and then walked away to prepare their own funerals.

Lost in thought, he stares at the ceiling before composing himself. After a lull of silence, pressing his fingers on the table, he adds, “It was so bad, to just test someone and tell them — you are HIV-positive and then say bye,” he adds in a low tone.

But how did Salmond end up at the fore-front of the AIDS fight in Uganda? It was on one of his journeys in search of greener pastures. Uganda was his connecting route to his final destination.

He was on his way to Rwanda but his work permit did not materialise so he ended up staying in Kenya. But another opening came and in 1988 he came to Uganda to work with World Learning, an NGO still operating in West Nile, Uganda.

Around that time, USAID approached World Learning Centre to start an HIV/AIDS programme at the peak of the HIV/AIDS problem in Uganda.

Salmond together with Maureen Kaleeba, another AIDS activist, were taken to an AIDS Clinic in San Franscisco to familiarise themselves with HIV testing and counselling, practices which Uganda was adopting.

Most of the cases he encountered at the San Franscisco clinic were mostly gay men.

On return, he joined The AIDS Information Centre and became one of its pioneer heads. Salmond’s real life encounter with AIDS was through his driver. It is a chilling story.

And the way he narrates it attests to this. One morning his driver suddenly got so sick.

Within a short time his teeth literally fell out. There was panic and no one knew what to do. The disease was strange and unknown.

This was someone who used to take Salmonds daughter to school. Out of compassion Salmond’s family mobilised money to send him abroad for treatment. By the time they discovered it was AIDS he was in the UK on treatment.

Another story he remembers is when a soldier came carrying a gun to test for HIV/AIDS. When he was called to pick his results he wanted to carry his gun with him to the counselling room. “I said no. How do you tell an armed person, he is HIV positive.

He can do anything with the gun at that point,” Salmond says. Looking back Salmond says, Uganda has come a long way. “Ugandans are lucky because there are more resources and the treatment is available.”

He says now it is easier to save more babies through prevention of mother to child transmission. “Focus now should be on prevention, because without prevention that means we will need more and more drugs which require more funds.”

Salmond says there is need to have a different approach to HIV like the other infectious diseases. “It should be handled as a public disease. For instance why not make it compulsory for HIV tests before any one is allowed to join university?”

He likens this to his university days when it was compulsory to test for Tuberculosis before being considered for admission. In response to the Ministry of Health call for an HIV-free generation, the organisation is also working in 52 sites which provide care and treatment for families.

With support from the Global Fund and President Bush’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, over 100,000 adults and 12,000 children in Uganda are now on HIV treatment. But Salmond says more people need help.

“We also need to continue to turn off the tap of new infections from mother to baby. Last week I was at Bugembe Health Centre 4 in Jinja. They had just received 30 HIV-negative results for babies who were recently born to HIV-positive mothers,” a positive development Salmond notes.

Salmond was born towards the end of World War II in 1945, in a poor neighbourhood of Edinburgh, Scotland. His parents rented a small apartment in an old tenement in Dalry. His father studied accountancy while his mother was a bookkeeper in the army.

He attended primary school in Edinburgh before heading to Royal High School for his secondary education. He later joined university at St. Andrews and studied English Literature and Philosophy before enrolling for a second degree in Theology at Edinburgh University.

Like any other child from a poor family he encountered challenges when growing up. At one time he made ends meet as a delivery boy before working as a cyclist. He juggled all this with school. “My parents were not rich but they tried within their means to provide for us,” he says.

He has written a book titled “Grandma” which will soon be published in Kampala.
He says his life’s thoughts and philosophy are in it. “I think that life is a great mystery and that every single person has a wonderful story to tell.”

He has been inspired by many people in his life — fondly referring to his father and mother. “Everyone needs a mentor.”
His advice to the young people is; “Go to an AIDS Information Centre and receive counselling and testing.

Then make a solemn vow that you and your future sexual partner and your children will be part of the new Uganda — an HIV-free generation.”