March 11, 2003	Tuesday	Muharram 7, 1424

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BENTOTA (Sri Lanka), March 10: India is soon likely to become the country with the largest population of people infected with HIV and AIDS.

This had grave implications for other countries of South Asia, particularly Pakistan, said speakers at a five-day international workshop, which got under way here at a beach resort on Monday morning.

The director general of Sri Lanka’s health services, Dr Athula Kahanda-Liyanage, said at the workshop’s opening session that had New Delhi heeded the advice given to it some 15 to 20 years ago, there would have been considerably less cases of HIV and AIDS there.

Speaking as chief guest at the World Bank’s workshop on HIV and AIDS, Dr Liyanage said like Pakistan Sri Lanka was a “low-prevalence but a high-incidence country. “By this we mean that even though at this point in time the general population is largely uninfected, but given the people’s risky behaviour, the situation may worsen very quickly and very drastically.”

What the senior Sri Lankan official said on Monday was in line with what the World Bank and United Nations have been saying all along. These two international organizations have been warning, for the last several years, that even though parts of Africa are currently in the grip of an HIV/AIDS pandemic, South Asia is going to be the epicentre of future such epidemics.

India has more than three million people who have either AIDS or HIV. The situation there is very grave as many of its states are currently facing health crises.

Peter Harold — the country director of World Bank’s Sri Lankan chapter — reiterated that India would soon emerge as the country with the highest number of HIV cases. “India has thus become critical for the health scenario of this part of the world,” he said.

Speaking at the opening session of the workshop for which delegates have converged from all parts of South Asia, Peter Harold pointed out that countries like Sri Lanka and Pakistan had still got opportunities to “nip the evil in the bud”.

He said Namibia had taken several multi-sectoral and timely steps in the recent past against the HIV/AIDS scourge. “The HIV/AIDS seem to permeate every issue, every programme in that country.

“As a result, the disease is now showing signs of slowing down.”

Mr Harold was of the view that Sri Lanka was sitting on a “volcano”. “We are seeing lots and lots of movements here. Soldiers are going back to their homes.

“So are the migrant workers. Then there are the more than 75 brothels which are doing great business. All this makes the situation a potentially explosive one,” the World Bank official said.

He informed delegates that the people involved in anti-HIV work had managed to persuade the Sri Lankan president to take part in the opening session of an event scheduled for later this month.

“This hopefully will be the start of a long and fruitful association with VVIPs against the killer disease.”