LAHORE, Oct 15: The federal government is set to launch a $48 million five-year project to control HIV/AIDS epidemic with a view to improving health status of the population to strengthen the nation’s human capital.

The World Bank funded project called Enhanced HIV/AIDS Control Programme is expected to contribute towards preventing mortality among labour force by holding down the HIV/AIDS epidemic at the current low level of below one per cent in the general adult population.

At present, there are some 1,642 HIV positive cases, including 377 in the Punjab, mainly amongst the high risk and vulnerable groups of population.

The Punjab will get Rs600 million share from the project which will be implemented mostly through NGOs already working in this field.

The project will focus on vulnerable population, advocacy for a behavioural change in general population, safe blood transfusion, capacity building of NGOs, and the programme implementation unit. It will be executed in 15 cities of the country which include six from the Punjab —- Lahore, Multan, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Faisalabad and Rawalpindi. The project will, however, cover the whole country for behaviour change communication, health education, blood transfusion services and management of STI services.

Meanwhile, the Provincial Aids Control Programme of the Punjab has invited applications from NGOs to give their expression of interest (EOI) for shortlisting and final selection for award of the contracts. Representatives of a good number of NGOs attended a briefing session about the new project at the Director-General of Health Services, Punjab, offices on Monday.

Talking to Dawn, Punjab Aids Consortium secretary-general Raja Khalid Mahmood said Pakistan had a high risk of HIV/AIDS with very low prevalence.

The HIV epidemic is rapidly spreading across the world. According to the UNAIDS estimates, there are around 36 million, people, including 16.4 million women, living with HIV/AIDS around the globe. The figure of HIV/AIDS is 50 per cent higher than the WHO projection in 1991. In the year 2000 alone, 5.3 million new infections of HIV occurred with three million deaths, increasing the death toll to 21.8 million since the beginning of the epidemic.

The recent data indicates that the disease is spreading faster in Asia than in any other region of the world. An estimated 700,000 adults have been infected in South and South-East Asia during the year 2000, with an estimated 5.8 million adults and children living with HIV/AIDS.

Experts say that the factors contributing towards HIV/AIDS spread include poor socio-economic conditions, poverty, growing sex industry, increasing drug abuse, illiteracy, cross border migration and mobility, unsafe blood transfusion and a large proportion of population in the reproductive age group.

The experts say the heterosexual transmission (51.4 per cent) and contaminated blood or blood products (12.5 per cent) are the most common modes of transmission for HIV/AIDS in Pakistan. Other modes include injecting drug use (IDU) (2.2 per cent), homosexual or bisexual (4.2 per cent) and mother to child transmission (2.4 per cent).

Limited available research indicates that HIV prevalence is one to two per cent in vulnerable/high risk population which includes sex workers, migrant workers, injecting drug users, men who sex with men, long distance truckers, blood and blood product recipients, STI patients, professional blood donors, jail inmates and seamen. —- MANSOOR MALIK