KARACHI: Medicine can prevent HIV transmission to babies
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, Nov 29: Drugs have been developed with the help of which transmission of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) from a pregnant woman to her baby can be stopped. The cost of the drug is not too high.
This was revealed by Dr Sharaf Ali Shah of the Sindh AIDS Control Programme, Dr S. Abdul Mujeeb of the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre and Dr Asif Aslam of Unicef at a press briefing on Saturday. The drugs must be administered to the woman when she goes into labour.
Answering a question, Dr Shah said the drugs were not currently available in Pakistan. “But I hope soon it will be available here too.”
Dr Shah said the Global Fund had given $11 million to Pakistan, which would be utilized in combating tuberculosis, malaria and HIV or AIDS. The money is supposed to be distributed through non-governmental organizations.
“Under this programme, drugs would be made available to combat AIDS or HIV too.” He said this year, of the 86 cases of HIV or Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome that were reported from Sindh, 22 involved users of injectable drugs.
This represented a change in the transmission patterns of HIV and AIDS. He said the most frequent mode of transmission still remained sex between a person living with HIV or AIDS and his or her unsuspecting partner.
Dr Shah said in the past years the number of cases involving injected drug users was low. “But this year, as you can see for yourself, more than 30 per cent of the cases involved abusers of injected drugs.”
He said from the standpoint of HIV/AIDS use of drugs was not a problem. “However, the sharing of needles between healthy persons and those having the infection or the disease is what compounds the problem because this is how they can be transmitted.”
Dr Shah said between June and November an outbreak was reported from Larkana where 990 tests were carried out which unearthed 24 HIV positive cases. Twenty of the cases involved use of injected drugs.
During the period, 633 tests were carried out on jail inmates which revealed 15 HIV positive cases. “From these figures you can well realize the gravity of the situation.”
Larkana was fast becoming a centre for drug supply, he said. “Addicts from all parts of the country have been converging on the city because illicit drugs are easily available there.”
He said there were up to four million drug addicts in the country. This is an alarming figure. Also, many drug users have started injecting drugs instead of inhaling them.
This is another fact which should alarm all of us.”
Dr Shah underscored the need to control the supply of drugs, not only to curb the spread of addiction but also to keep the number of HIV/AIDS cases within manageable limits. Up to June 2003 deported Pakistanis from the Gulf countries was the single largest group in the country identified with HIV but now the trend was changing.
The manager of the Sindh AIDS Control Programme was of the view that focused intervention among users of injectable drugs was needed all over the country. “Even though this change in the transmission pattern has been identified by us in Sindh all the provinces should undertake studies to determine if this was true in their cases too.”
Dr Shah expressed dismay that centres for detoxification and rehabilitation of drug addicts had not been established in sufficient numbers.
“I am not saying that such centres have not been set up at all. There are some centres which are mostly in the private sector. But, the fact remains that we need more
centres, especially in the public sector.”
Dr S. Abdul Mujeeb of the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre on the occasion said HIV/AIDS was a unique affliction in which no organ was attacked by the virus. “Instead, the immune system is attacked after which a person is basically left at the mercy of various diseases and infections.”
Answering a question, Dr Mujeeb said most persons having AIDS or HIV died of tuberculosis. “This is simply because his or her immune system is so weak that it cannot fight back TB.”
He said 40 million people in the world were living with HIV or AIDS. This year the number of new cases was five million, including 700,000 children. The total number of deaths stood at three million.
Dr Mujeeb said several theories about how AIDS came about had been propounded over the years. “Some people say that it remained localized in a part of Africa for the past many years. But due to globalization and other such phenomena, the disease began affecting people outside the areas where it was endemic.”
Other researchers say that the disease might have jumped species, he said. “Others say that there may be a combination of reasons why the disease reared its head at this particular junction in history.”
Dr Mujeeb pointed out that the incubation period for HIV was eight to 10 weeks. “During this period a person may get infected but tests will not be positive. This is called false negatives.”
