KARACHI, July 7: The screening of the blood of drug addicts in Karachi would soon be undertaken in an organized fashion, said the chief of the Sindh AIDS Control Programme on Monday.

Dr Sharaf Ali Shah told Dawn that a letter had been sent in this regard to the inspector general of police. “You see, many drug users are confined in the city’s jails. So we need the permission of the IG to carry out blood tests on the inmates,” he said.

He admitted that alarm bells had been set off among the community of doctors after the detection of 17 cases of HIV recently in Larkana. This was so because the drug users often shared needles, thereby increasing the chances of wide spread of the condition.

He said screening work had already begun in both Sukkur and Hyderabad. “Until Sunday 200 blood samples had been screened in Sukkur and 600 in Hyderabad.”