KARACHI, July 14: The National AIDS Control Programme does not spend a single penny on the treatment of persons, who are either HIV-positive or are suffering from full-blown AIDS.
This flaw in the NACP’s policies was pointed out to Dawn on Sunday by Shukria Gul, an HIV-positive woman who runs her own NGO called Pak Plus Society. She also alleged that instead of helping the HIV-positive persons to create awareness about HIV and AIDS, their efforts were actively discouraged.
Ms Gul said that her NGO had formulated a couple of initiatives, which were not given due attention by the NACP officials. The funds had become concentrated in a few hands, she alleged.
When contacted on Monday, the chief of the Sindh AIDS Control Programme, Mr Sharaf Ali Shah, admitted that medicines were provided to the HIV-positive persons neither under the national programme nor under the provincial programme.
Mr Shah added that the Pakistani officials had made a request several years ago to the World Bank officials to allocate some funds for drugs meant for HIV-positive people. “But our suggestions were not adopted for implementation,” he said.
Meanwhile, Shukria Gul told Dawn that her husband suffered from AIDS from whom she was probably infected. “I don’t know from where and how did he contact the awful disease. I know only that he used to work in South Africa and used to come to Pakistan once or twice every year,” she said.
In response to a question, Ms Gul said that her close relatives were largely supportive of her when it was revealed that she was HIV-positive. “But the attitude of some neighbours was awful. They wanted me to leave their neighbourhood the moment they learnt of my status vis-a-vis HIV,” she added.
Speaking of her ordeal at the hands of journalists, she said some newspapers had painted a very controversial and objectionable picture of her. “This made matters worse for me, but I stuck to my guns and formed an NGO,” she said.
She was married 1990, but by the year 1995 she had been widowed, said Ms Gul. She had a 10-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl, who were both free of HIV.
Ms Gul claimed that she had been made a member of the six- member body called the Country Coordination Mechanism. She revealed that hardly any debate took place in the meetings of the CCM under which various policies were stated to be formulated.
“In one such meeting, I was asked to sign some documents which were never discussed. Initially, I refused to sign the documents but later I relented because of the insistence of some senior members of the CCM,” she informed.
Ms Gul expressed her fears that soon a large number of HIV and AIDS cases would be detected in the country. “The detection of 17 HIV-positive persons in Larkana indicates that the situation is grim, very grim,” she maintained.
The chairperson of the NGO called Strengthening Health, Education and Environment Development (SHEED), who introduced herself only as Mrs Lubna, told Dawn that the sex workers who suffered from AIDS were treated like untouchables by relatives and friends.
“Recently we were witness to the shabby treatment meted out to a sex worker in the Lahore’s red light district. When she became very ill, this lady used to be carried by her relatives to a field near her home and left there to die.
Mrs Lubna said, “Whenever we heard this, we took her back to her home. This happened several times.” She said the family members used to wear gloves whenever they carried her to the field.
In response to a question, she said according to the NACP’s estimates about 25,000 sex workers resided in Lahore and another 60,000 in Karachi. The use of condoms was increasing gradually among the people, who visited the sex workers, said Mrs Lubna.
Syed Qamaruddin of the Development of Awareness for AIDS Rehabilitation and Educational Society (DARES) said many among the truckers and coal-miners in Balochistan were HIV positive. The Afghans living in the refugee camps were also at risk of contracting this disease.
Mirza Aleem Baig, the chief of a Karachi-based NGO, which specialized in sexually transmitted diseases among male and female sex workers, claimed that substantial allocation in the field of HIV/AIDS prevention had resulted in a mushrooming of bogus NGOs. “These days we see a number of NGOs, which exist on paper only,” he added.
However, he alleged that the authorities actually liked such NGOs, because they were ready to act as “rubber stamp” bodies on their behalf.
