Kampala Key, Vulnerable and Priority Populations (KVP) News

The game is a brainchild of Tom Rogers Muyunga-Mukasa. It takes its name and idea from the famous board games called "MONOPOLY" and "SCRABBLE." Only, this one has no dice and shaker but comes with individual holders for the tiles. It is made of a board with drawings to match the square slabs called tiles. The board has pictures which can be matched with what is written on the tiles. The objective is to place the tiles in such a way that the players will eventually arrive to either of the four corners (homes).  The mission of the game is to provide cues for discussion among the players, how to eradicate HIV as well as being a tool for building critical knowledge on what it takes to eradicate HIV. It is a game of hope. One day AIDS will be no more.

Our story is one about actual HIV needs and interventions.  We are committed and dedicated to working with the grassroots. We pioneered the small but applicable best-practices approach. We work with small groups and work through topical themes. It is these that have impact on say: comprehensive HIV prevention practices; optimal adherence; life planning skills; and organization development to name but a few. We are the pioneers of casuistic message tools as a form of galvanizing participation by beneficiaries in promoting life preserving practices. We bring you some of the message tools and this time we are bringing you a theme on sexual harassment!

Relationship Between Utility and Adherence   MARPs in Uganda a local NGO, embarked on synthesizing reports from all its activities and uses standard knowledge development methods. Under the program “structural barriers to ART adherence in the Global South,” one of the the themes understanding there being an unbreakable link between language, power relations and materiality of daily life. Factors such as political stability, armed forces or insurgences around the globe can be linked to resource allocations, vulnerability and disease burden, e.g., HIV burden. This presents a crucial key metric of global inequalities or resources and power. The amount of money compensated to workers in turn create different opportunities to access medications. According to UNAIDS, governments can invest in improving health. Where a robust health system is not in place like the global south, governments have negotiated generic brands of medications which have enabled many people who need AR...

Coercions, exclusions, voluntary participation and inclusion   MARPs in Uganda a local NGO, embarked on synthesizing reports from all its activities and uses standard knowledge development methods. Under the program “structural barriers to ART adherence in the Global South,” one of the the themes is the 40 year paradox of HIV Prevention moving hand in hand with inequalities across places. Scholars point out the role of social, political, economical and cultural status in affecting planned HIV Prevention and in turn optimal ARV adherence. Some social factors include: stigma, food purchases, subsistence, rent, transport expenditures, registration, user fees at health facilities, managing opportunistic infections and lost wages due to long waiting times. In some cases, long waiting hours could be clinical in nature. Adverse side effects and poor adherence practices, may lead to drug resistance and need to switch from first line ART which is cheaper to second line ART which is 10...

Prevention as situated knowledge MARPs in Uganda a local NGO, embarked on synthesizing reports from all its activities and uses standard knowledge development methods. Under the program “structural barriers to ART adherence in the Global South,” one of the themes is looking at prevention as a knowledge generator. HIV prevention has broader social purposes whose generated knowledge can be used to differentiate between formal and informal HIV prevention, planned outcomes and grass-root lived reality. An implementation inequality seems to persist and continuously expand as funded formal structures push out non-funded informal prevention structures. There is an inequality in funding channeled through a prevention industry which mostly dismisses grass-root daily lived experiences and harshness. More HIV Prevention funding goes into overhead costs such as office rent, allowances and salaries. But, there is too little that provides support in form of transport to clinics, ...

Creating Knowledge at Most At Risk Populations’ Society in Uganda ( MARPS in Uganda) to influence HIV Prevention MARPs in Uganda a local NGO, embarked on synthesizing reports from all its activities and uses standard knowledge development methods. Under the program “structural barriers to ART adherence in the Global South,” one of the themes is knowledge generation. A template was developed on which sources to use were listed including peer reviewed databases and other materials (primary and secondary data). Literature review was done through Political and Social research databases, Google, Internet search to retrieve and download published materials, Pub-Med, Medline, CANCERLIT, and HealthSTAR for articles published between 2000 and 2016 that involved disparities in health outcomes. The following keywords were used: HIV, HIV Prevention, Marxian political-social structures, structuralism, Keynesian, Import Substitution Industrialization, Generic Drugs manufacture, Global S...

Using Marxian political-economy analyses to identify and confront hardships to ART adherence in Africa MARPs in Uganda a local NGO, embarked on synthesizing reports from all its activities and uses standard knowledge development methods. Under the program “structural barriers to ART adherence in the Global South,” one of the themes is the connection between knowledge, power and privilege affect access to HIV-related quality services in different domestic countries. In many of the countries, especially the global South, HIV prevalence reductions require comprehensive understanding of HIV prevention goals and import substitution and generic drug manufacture. Scholars points out that structural developments drive impacting change at national levels. State-led domestic industrialization policies allow for instance, drug manufacturing which in turn provides contexts in which people can access locally made medications. This is one example of how a national-scale policy helps influ...

Identifying and confronting hardships to ART adherence in Africa MARPs in Uganda a local NGO, embarked on synthesizing reports from all its activities and uses standard knowledge development methods. Under the program “structural barriers to ART adherence in the Global South,” one of the themes is political-social ecology of HIV prevention initiatives. HIV prevention is impacted by a political-social ecology which sets the contexts in which achieving optimal ARV adherence may or may not be possible. Conservatism and neoliberalism has had an impact on privatization which in turn has an impact on ARV supply. Therefore, the business of managing an HIV+ve diagnosis relies on many players other than health personnel. The competing priorities may allow for exclusionary tendencies, cause capital accumulation, cater to human and structural priorities other than addressing inequality or meeting health goals. Literature review was done through Pub-Med, Medline, Political and Social...

LGBTIQQ, provider-bias, food and transport costs: confronting hardships to ART adherence in Uganda and Kenya MARPs in Uganda a local NGO, embarked on synthesizing reports from all its activities and uses standard knowledge development methods. Under the program “structural barriers to ART adherence in the Global South,” one of the the themes that the NGO is obsessed about is the relation between optimal adherence, morbidity and mortality from HIV/STIs. At MARPs in Uganda, we followed worked with LGBTIQQ in two Kampala-based and 1 Nairobi-based sites followed from 2014-2017. Some LGBTIQQ were living with HIV; had disruptions which affected ART adherence in 2014-2016. LGBTIQQ consumers fail to achieve optimal adherence, risking drug resistance and negative treatment outcomes. This review sought to find out why. MARPs in Uganda a local NGO followed persons living with HIV who were attached to no-user fees ART accredited facilities. They were regularly provided with cash...

MARPs in Uganda a local NGO, embarked on synthesizing reports from all its activities and uses standard knowledge development methods. Under the program “structural barriers to ART adherence in the Global South,” one of the themes that the NGO is obsessed about is morbidity and mortality from HIV/STIs. According to scholars, researchers and reviews form reports. Mortality from HIV is at higher rates and biologically aggressive in the Global South than the West. This disparity reflects social barriers that disproportionally hinder prevention and control efforts and modify the biological expression of disease. The political-social ecology contexts delineate social, economic, and cultural factors that are potentially responsible for the disparities.   MARPs in Uganda will generate reviews from which content reports can be developed. This particular review is therefore guided by the social determinants of health disparities model, a model that identifies barriers associated ...

Production of HIV Prevention Knowledge and Deciphering Non-Dominant Prevention Data MARPs in Uganda a local NGO, embarked on synthesizing reports from all its activities and uses standard knowledge development methods. Under the program “structural barriers to ART adherence in the Global South,” one of the themes is identifying the producers of information about HIV prevention. HIV prevention knowledge is produced by diverse actors, including activists, consultants and intellectuals who are located in varied sites ranging from CBO’s, CSO’s, FBO’s, NGO’s, universities, social movements and state agencies. These different actors produce distinct ideas about HIV prevention. Some produce knowledge through activism, action, research or policy-making. This makes HIV prevention a contested term. HIV prevention can be construed as concrete, material actions and processes; or it can be discourse.HIV prevention with the intention to establish infrastructure for testing, supply A...

MOST AT RISK POPULATIONS’ SOCIETY IN UGANDA (MARPS in Uganda) Background and History MOST AT RISK POPULATIONS’ SOCIETY IN UGANDA (MARPS in Uganda)   was formed as a fully fledged merger of three other organizations by Health care Providers and Human Rights Activists. Its purpose is fivefold: to be the social support affirming non-heterosexual normativity; provide Information, Education, Communication and Protective Prophylaxis to beneficiaries; provide short residence support to evicted beneficiaries; and join all networks that inform HIV/Mental Health Response in Africa and the world. Vision: A world in which all people are empowered to contribute to thriving communities.   Long Term mission: - To establish spaces in which it is possible to engage in full community life, enjoy happiness and are assured of fuller quality life without vulnerabilities to HIV/AIDS and STIs.

Driving is inherently not dangerous. But, driving recklessly is.Power struggles exist because humans are differently talented with different skill sets. Therefore different interests exist. It is important to note that living within a smaller community or a larger society comes with duties (collective roles towards one another most especially depending on position one enjoys) and obligations (that which one provides or contributes to self or others). Among the LGBTIQQ organizations, talent or ability or functionality or employability or productivity is not enthusiastically nurtured by those in leadership positions perhaps for reasons best kept to themselves. Some of these reasons are revealed anecdotally and they spring from fear of competition or rooted in insecurities. There is a prophet complex, where structures revolve around one, two, three heroines or heroes which for interest of class division ( using post structural marxist analysis) I am calling this...

  Offender punishment is in form of punitive sanctions such as fines, community service and probation which have been shown to effectively deter future criminal behavior. However, for some crimes that are much too serious to justify rehabilitation efforts, punishment in the form of lengthy prison sentences is seen as the best option. Judges consider several factors when determining sentencing of a defendant to prison. These may include social, economical and political status, age, criminal history, family background and support system, concerns of victims and interested parties, attitude and counseling needs. This impacts on who is incarcerated and gravity of sentence.   Victim considerations and restoration are part of the goal of the criminal justice system. In the event a defendant owes restitution to a victim, this can be directly to a court. It is the court which   forwards the money or form of restitution to the victim. Victims have the right to be heard ...

An analysis of the criminal justice system will draw our attention further to why its neoliberal and punitive orientation fuel sentencing disparities. This is not a denunciation of the criminal justice system. However, it is a critique of HIV criminalization which as I have shown earlier should instead be called HIV voluntary transmission criminalization. According to scholars, the criminal justice system monitors the practices, acts and behavior of community members through community, society and government agencies such as the police, sheriff’s departments, the courts and the state and federal prison systems. Law enforcement personnel patrol communities to ensure that neighborhoods remain safe, and citizens may report crimes they witness or personally experience. Suspected criminals are given fair trials in U.S. courts, and if convicted, sentenced to rehabilitation or incarceration. Criminalization, has something to offer in form of offender rehabilitation, offender punish...

HIV criminalization is a path to incarceration and strips the “criminal” of her/his autonomy. It does so when it attributes its definitions located in substance, ideology, or normative claims which are a reflection of the powerful majority as shown earlier by Brown (2016). HIV criminalization earns the “criminal” a citizenship behind bars.   Scholars have critically evaluated this kind of scenario and it parallels critiques put forward on earned citizenship of immigrants. There shortcomings are embedded in politics, morality, policy, and law. On one extent it is laudable in that it deters voluntary transmission or malice-driven HIV transmission. It has been shown to suffer from serious and previously unaddressed theoretical and conceptual flaws that re-inscribe the moral claims of restrictionists, illuminate and imperil larger understandings of citizenship, and invite consideration of alternative frameworks for legalization. On close examination HIV crimina...

An in-depth look into the social context and political-economic structures within which the criminal justice process operates can shed more light on sentencing disparities. This disparity arises due to many other factors including what comprises the criminal justice system itself. There are numerous sections within the criminal justice system to make it operational. The very make up the criminal justice system is what leads to the different outcomes of sentencing.  Scholars show that the criminal justice system is composed of or has to put so many interests in mind ranting from: policing and police powers, the prosecution process, the rights of suspects and victims, court processes, and appeals against conviction. Young and Sanders (2007), further show that the criminal justice system is a complex social institution which regulates potential, alleged and actual criminal activity within procedural limits supposed to protect people from wrongful treatment and wrongful ...