Uganda: 'No shortage of condoms'

The government says there are enough condoms to last out the year

The Ugandan government has rejected reports by US health campaigners that the country faces a condom shortage.

The US-based Center for Health and Gender Equity said Uganda had been facing a shortage for 10 months.

The organisation said the crisis had been caused by programmes promoting abstinence rather than safer sex.

But a senior official at the ministry of health told a Ugandan newspaper that the country had enough condoms to last until the end of this year.

"We have enough condoms. We just procured 65 million condoms about two months ago and another 80 million is on the way, so there is no shortage of condoms in the country," Mike Mukula told The Monitor newspaper.

"That there is a condom shortage in the country is just a rumour by people who want to spoil the image of this country," Mr Mukula said.

"I challenge anyone who says we do not have condoms to come and I show them our stores," he added.

He said the country uses about five million condoms monthly.

Uganda is often held up as a model of how to fight HIV/Aids, with infection rates falling from 15 to 5%.

But Uganda's anti-Aids campaign has recently been criticised, with some saying that under pressure from the US, it is concentrating on abstinence, rather than all three parts of its Abstinence, Be faithful and Condoms (ABC) strategy.