Meet A Human Rights Activist From Uganda, Tom R. Muyunga-Mukasa

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Tom Rogers Muyunga-Mukasa is a Global health Practitioner, Social Justice Change Agent and an HIV Care health worker all in one. With friends, he helped found the HIV Safari, a blog dedicated to bringing to you HIV stories from around the world. He is also the co-owner of AIDS Blog Uganda, where with colleagues they bring to light the stigma, discrimination and issues related to HIV in Ugandan homes or communities. Tom has engaged in strategic activities defending the right to life and dignity of People Living With HIV e.g., children, adolescents, adults and seniors.

Tom has never given up standing on the side of the marginalized. He has in the process seen the good results of sharing a common good but he has also suffered the hard hitting blows of backlash. For over twenty years, Tom has been pivotal in creating interventions touching on nuanced needs of Persons Living With HIV most especially those who were isolated by economic, cultural, religious and status facets.  Along the way, Tom co-founded the Most At Risk Populations' Society in Uganda (MARPS in Uganda) in/around 2003-2004 to provide emotional health counselling and support to people living with HIV in Uganda. 

 As a Social Justice Practitioner with medical and advanced public health training, Tom chose to write about environment sustainability, housing stability, food security, active life, development, social transformation, sexuality, orientation, gender, identity and health in Uganda at a time when environmental conservation, rights-based approaches, evidence-based interventions, social transformation, homosexuality and heterosexuality were thematic, trendy and topical. Later, at MARPS in Uganda, he chose to come up with a blog KMPHJ, and in it one will find information about impact of stigma and discrimination to ARV access by any one who is living with HIV. They also use it to highlight the facets of the intersection of law, sexuality, orientation, justice, privacy and dignity. 

Tom has worked in 25 African countries, travelled widely in Europe and USA. He has worked with the Ugandan Ministry of Health, Boston Area HIV services, the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), San Francisco General Hospital Refugee Clinic, the San Francisco County No To Stigma Committee and The National HIV is Not A Crime Movement. He founded the Rainbow Networks Africa as a group of grassroots in starting and maintaining conversations and action around: HIV Laws and Gender expansive issues in Africa. He collects essays under the HIV Laws and Gender expansive issues in Africa. He has also concentrated on writing about Uganda. One can find this at Rainbow Network Uganda, where he brings to light nuanced HIV Laws and Gender expansive implications in Uganda.




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