January 12, 2008	Saturday	Muharram 02,1429

KARACHI, Jan 11: The city government in collaboration with the Sindh AIDS Control Programme will jointly organise training programmes in every union council to create awareness of the deadly disease and precautions to avoid HIV/AIDS.

The programme is aimed at containing spread of the disease and providing better treatment facilities to the affected people.

In the first phase, Saddar Town has been selected as a model town where training programmes will be organised in its union councils for which the CDGK will extend full cooperation to the Sindh AIDS Control Programme.

A decision to this effect was taken at a meeting chaired by Naib City Nazim Nasreen Jalil here on Friday.

Ms Jalil told the meeting that women fell victim to the disease because of a lack of adequate knowledge. Therefore, she said, it was imperative to create awareness among women folk.

She said political, social and other organisations should also help create awareness of Aids.

She informed the meeting that after launching the programme at UC level, the city government would arrange such programmes at town level.

Programme Manager Arshad Mahmood of the Sindh AIDS Control Programme referred to the recent statistics and said there were about 4,000 cases of AIDS in Pakistan and 80 per cent of them came from Sindh and Balochistan.

Media Coordinator Dr Sikandar Iqbal, Coordinator Moosa Qazi, Dr Nighat Shakeel and others were also present at the meeting.—Agencies