On Saturday, 13th December 2015, the Celebrate Life Concert took place at the National Theatre Gardens in a bid to raise awareness about HIV Drug Resistance.
The free show, which attracted hundreds of people, was graced by local musical sensations like Eagles Production, Pamela Ssenyonga, married musicians Sam and Sophie Gombya who did a great collabo of her hit song ‘Spare Tyre’, Geoffrey Lutaaya, Moses Supercharger and Maro who had the audience on their feet as he belted out an acapella of his monster hit ‘Mubbi Bubbi.’ who pitched in messages of hope and adherence to HIV treatment to the crowd amid their performances.
Worldwide, 36.9 million people are living with HIV, of whom 25.8 million people live in sub-Saharan Africa. In Uganda, 1.5 million people are living with HIV and 50% of them are receiving antiretroviral treatment.
If a person is infected with HIV, the HIV virus multiplies in this person’s body. Sometimes, when the virus multiplies, it changes its form a little, thereby creating copies which are slightly different from the original virus. Sometimes, these copies are so different that they do not respond to the antiretroviral drugs a person is taking, the copies are then called drug-resistant. The antiretroviral drugs will then not be able to suppress the drug resistant virus. If a person has drug resistant forms of the virus in his body, this means that some antiretroviral drugs do not work anymore. The virus in the body is then no longer suppressed and the person will get symptoms and get sick: his treatment fails. If a person has treatment failure, he will need to use other drugs to be able to suppress the virus in his body again.
The event was sponsored by the Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development (AIGHD) and PINA Uganda (People In Need Agency).