The Ugandan army says it's planning to court martial a soldier suspected of knowingly infecting dozens of women with the HIV virus that can lead to AIDS.

An army spokesman said the soldier, whom he named as Captain Paddy Sekyalo, was arrested yesterday, after he was reported to have admitted publicly at a mosque in the capital, Kampala, that he had infected forty women.

The army said the captain was detained at the defence ministry headquarters in Bombo, but investigations were still going on and he had not yet been tested for the disease. An estimated two-million of Uganda's twenty-three-million-strong population carry the HIV virus, but the country is the only one in Africa to show a decline in cases over the past ten years.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service