KARACHI, July 9: The recent disclosure that 17 people in Larkana are HIV positive has set off alarm bells in the community of doctors and also that of social workers.

The persons whose blood samples were tested positive for HIV are all inmates of a jail and use drugs regularly. This is a particularly worrying development because more than one million Pakistanis, according to the United Nations, are drug addicts.

More than 500,000 drug addicts live in Karachi alone, according to the ANF officials. Many of the drug addicts share needles, thereby increasing the chances of a sudden rise in the number of HIV positive persons among drug addicts, the chief of the Sindh AIDS Control Programme told Dawn.

Dr Sharaf Ali Shah said a special consultative meeting would be held jointly by the Sindh AIDS Control Programme and UNAIDS on Wednesday and Thursday to discuss ways to stop the dreaded disease from spreading to other parts of the province. Dayanath C. Jayasuriya, the UNAIDS’ country adviser, will inaugurate the event.

The HIV positive men in Larkana were treated very badly by the police, he added. “They were treated like untouchables and locked up in police vans.”

Dr Shah said his colleagues negotiated with the police officials to get the men released. They were later shifted to a rehabilitation centre.

When approached by Dawn, Qamar-ul-Islam Siddiqui of the National AIDS Control Programme, who was in Karachi in connection with a training workshop, said on Tuesday that the detection of new HIV cases almost coincided with the launching of the Enhanced Programme on HIV and AIDS.

“Under this programme, which was kicked off on July 1, the provincial AIDS control programmes would be implementing the projects mentioned in their PC1s, which have already been approved,” he said.

Mr Siddiqui said under the enhanced programme some Voluntary Counselling Centres were proposed to be established throughout the country. The persons who were suffering from AIDS or were HIV positive would be visiting the centres for counselling and guidance.

Any Pakistani desirous of finding out whether he was HIV positive or not would be able to get the blood tested at these centres, he added.

Dr Qamar Abbas of the Sindh AIDS Control Programme said more than 70 NGOs would be consulted before the formulation of a strategy to combat the situation arising out of the recent detection of HIV cases in the province.

He pointed out that of about 2,000 HIV and AIDS cases already detected in Pakistan, 80 per cent involved overseas workers. “But the outbreak in Larkana suggests that the trend may be changing.”

Mirza Aleem Baig, the chief of an NGO, claimed even senior officials in the health department needed to be sensitized about the issue. “Some officials declare openly that 2,000 cases of HIV and AIDS are not worrisome. They say thousands die every month in traffic accidents.

“But what these gentlemen and ladies don’t realize is that a person who is injured in an accident dies alone. But a person suffering from full-blown AIDS dies after infecting many others.”