HIV-AIDS rates in northern Uganda are nearly twice as high as the rest of the country because of an 18-year war with the brutal Lord?s Resistance Army rebel group, an aid agency said yesterday.

?National prevalence rates for Uganda are estimated at 6.2 percent and declining, but rates in war-affected areas are almost double that of the national average, at 11.9 percent,? World Vision said in a new report.

In Gulu district, epicentre of the rebellion, researchers found HIV/AIDS was the leading cause of death at 69 percent of fatalities, three times higher than direct killings during military confrontation, World Vision said.

The aid agency said massive displacement, poverty, lack of health care, and the high prevalence of rape as a weapon of war all contributed to the high number of infections. About 80 percent of residents in northern Uganda live in squalid camps because of the conflict with LRA rebels who have waged a war against the government of President Yoweri Museveni that has killed tens of thousands through violence and disease.

The insurgency by the cult-like group and its elusive leader Joseph Kony has forced more than 1.6 million people into camps, where up to 21 percent of children are malnourished and as many as 15,000 people share a single water source, World Vision said.

It said the virtual collapse of health-care systems meant northerners could not access information about HIV/AIDS, or take advantage of testing, counselling and treatment.

Uganda?s government, which has won international acclaim for reducing the HIV infection rate from around 30 percent in the early 1990s, could see many of those gains evaporate if the war was not brought to an end, it said.

Children were the main victims of fighting that costs the country more than $100 million a year, said the report, «Pawns of Politics: Children, Conflict and Peace in Northern Uganda.»

The LRA has kidnapped as many as 25,000 children to serve as fighters, porters and sex slaves who make up more than three-quarters of its ranks.

About half the girls abducted by the rebels are later found to carry the HIV virus, doctors say.

?If these girls make it back from the bush, they are sometimes rejected and abandoned by their families,? World Vision said. ?Some resort to survival sex, engaging in high risk behaviours that increase the spread of the disease.?

It said any post-conflict plan must make special provisions for counselling and community reintegration efforts for girls who were victims of sexual bondage.

<B>Daniel WALLIS</B>