Pakistan on Friday joined the rest of the world in observing the 'World Day Against Aids', and the pledge was renewed that effective prevention programmes would be enforced to eliminate the disease.
To mark the day, different NGOs and organisations organised programmes in which speakers called for making concerted efforts to create more awareness against Aids and HIV infection.
Addressing a seminar held under the auspices of Aids Prevention Association of Pakistan at Alhamra, Chairman Social Services Board Punjab, Mrs Saba Sadiq called for creating more awareness among the masses on Aids. She said that especially women should fully participate in the awareness campaign and take steps to prevent themselves from this fatal disease.
Saba Sadiq maintained that as a religion Islam provides best assistance and practical help to cure from such diseases. She appreciated the role of NGOs in creating awareness and providing congenial atmosphere in the society. She claimed that present government has taken a number of steps for the betterment of health sector while separate units of Aids patients have been established in the hospitals. She hoped that in the coming years-improved health services would be available which will reduce the number of Aids patients.
Speaking on the occasion, Principal Officer US Consulate Bryn D Hunt said that now Aids is a 'global challenge' and America has allocated US $50 billion for five year's presidential programme to take preventive measures in 120 nations against this disease. He said that 25 million people have so far died while 38 million are caught of Aids. He appreciated the role of NGOs in creating awareness against the disease.
According to a recent World Bank report titled 'AIDS in South Asia: understanding and responding to a heterogeneous epidemic' South Asia's HIV and AIDS epidemic could be expected to grow rapidly unless eight countries in the region, especially India, could saturate high-risk groups such as sex workers and their clients, injecting drug users and men having sex with men with better HIV prevention measures.
The report says that more than 5.5 million people are infected with HIV in South Asia, with the epidemic increasingly driven by the region's flourishing sex industry and injecting drug use. Contributing regional risk factors include widespread stigma and discrimination: poverty and inequality; illiteracy; the low social status of women; trafficking of women into commercial sex; porous borders; widespread migration; high levels of mobility; cultural restrictions on discussing sex; high rates of sexually transmitted infections; and limited condom use.
According to the report, halting the spread of the epidemic would depend on a two-pronged approach: first, establishing effective prevention programmes for groups at increased risk of HIV infection such as sex workers and their clients, injection drug users, and men who have sex with men; and secondly, resolving the social and economic drivers of the epidemic such as poverty, stigma, and sex trafficking of women.
Focusing mainly on five countries in the region for which there is adequate data (Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka), these countries must tailor their HIV prevention programmes to suit their own local conditions rather than rely on generic global or regional approaches which have failed to make a difference in individual countries, the report said.
On Pakistan and Bangladesh, the report said that the current HIV epidemics in these two countries occur mainly within networks of injecting drug users with evidence of the epidemic increasingly spreading among men having sex with men and hijras (transgender men). Effective prevention programmes among these communities may avert a wider epidemic. It warned that the potential spread of HIV from injecting drug users to networks of male and female sex workers would increase the severity of the epidemic and narrow a major window of opportunity for prevention. In Bangladesh, levels of risk are high, with potential for a substantial epidemic if there is significant spread among injection drug user networks and their sexual partners. HIV infection among sex workers in both countries remains at a low level, and intensive programmes for them and their clients, including a major focus on sex workers who inject drugs or whose sexual partners inject drugs, can prevent the epidemics from escalating.
It may recalled that the World Bank has supported efforts to fight AIDS in South Asia since the first National AIDS Control Project for India in 1992, and has committed US $380 million to support national programmes to date. The main components of these projects include: surveillance, monitoring and evaluation, targeted interventions for vulnerable sub-populations, blood safety, stigma reduction among the general population, and institutional development for a multi-sectoral response.
The sources in the Ministry of Health told Business Recorder that the World Bank will provide US $1 billion annual assistance for three years to Pakistan for the completion/up gradation of projects regarding health care, education and agriculture. The international donor institutions will provide a US $270 million grant for the elimination of TB, Polio and HIV-Aids, of which US $62 million will be provided for TB eradication.
According to them, diagnostic kits for testing HIV and Hepatitis-B have been provided to as many as 119 blood banks and 12 HIV surveillance centers at Lahore, Faisalabad, Multan, Bahawalpur, Dera Ghazi Khan, Sargodha, Jhelum, Gujranwala and Chakwal. The Punjab Aids Control Programme has set up a center of excellence namely Special Clinic at outpatient department of Mayo Hospital where comprehensive management including provision of specific and symptomatic treatment for HIV/Aids and counselling services will be provided to people living with HIV/Aids.