"It was difficult to tell people that I was HIV positive because there wasn't much support," says Gladys, a teacher in her 40s. Even though a million people have died of AIDS in Uganda, and a million more are infected with the virus, attitudes towards the disease haven't changed much in this Central African country in the past two and a half decades. When the AIDS epidemic began in the early 1980s one of the hardest hit countries was Uganda. By the early 1990s, over 18 percent of the population was infected with HIV, and in some areas, the figure was over 30 percent. But Uganda is one of the few countries in Africa that has managed to turn the tide, thanks to the government's openness about the disease and the work being done by local groups across the country. Infection rates have dropped from 18 percent to just over 6 percent.