And now, Uganda criminalizes the intentional transmission of HIV. Not only are they inflicting yet more indignities on the LBGT community there, but they’re going to set back public health in the process by actually making the situation they’re trying to fix worse:

But rights activists said the law would deter voluntary testing and further stigmatise infection with HIV, which causes AIDS and is primarily transmitted through unprotected intercourse as well as from mother to child during pregnancy.

“Evidence from the Ugandan Ministry of Health shows clearly - criminalisation of HIV doesn’t work,” said Asia Russell, Uganda-based director of international policy at Health GAP, an HIV advocacy group.

“It drives people away from services, and fuels discrimination and fear.”

Uganda had managed to cut infection rates from 18.5 percent of the population in 1992 to about 5 percent in 2000, according to United Nations figures. But the Ministry of Health puts the current rate at about 7.3 percent.

While HIV sufferers in developed countries can have near-normal life expectancy thanks to anti-retroviral drugs, rather than dying within perhaps a decade, this medication is too expensive for many in Africa. According to the United Nations, in 2011 only 54 percent of eligible Ugandan HIV sufferers were receiving anti-retrovirals.

The government argues that the “HIV and AIDS prevention and control bill”, first put forward in 2010, is needed to cut infection rates and reinforce other government measures to combat HIV/AIDS.

But activists say that, in addition to violating rights to confidentiality, the law will be hard to enforce as it can be very hard to determine which of two HIV-positive people infected the other.

They also note that the law does not appear to spell out what constitutes “wilful and intentional” transmission, and whether this would specifically exempt someone who had sex without knowing that they were HIV-positive, or who used a barrier such as a condom.