LAHORE, June 1: The Punjab Health Department will provide district governments comprehensive guidelines and help to control and prevent HIV/Aids at district level. This was stated by Punjab Health Minister Dr Tahir Ali Javed while talking to reporters here on Wednesday. He said that HIV/Aids control and its cure had become a great dilemma for both developed and under-developed countries.

He said that this fatal disease had so far affected more than 36.1 million people all over the world, out of which 34.7 million were adults, 16.4 million women and 1.4 million were children under 15 years of age. In India, he said, almost four million people were HIV positive.

Although the present situation about Aids epidemic in Pakistan was not as worse as in other parts of the world, the minister said Pakistan could not ignore the possible spread of this killer disease.

He said that it was a matter of grave concern that HIV/Aids positive cases were suggestive of a rise in the disease incidence though with a slower pace.

Dr Javed said the Enhanced HIV/Aids Control Programme had been initiated at federal and provincial levels for the period of five years with a total cost of Rs2.858 billion. Behaviour change of high risk population and general public along with the provision of awareness about preventive measures against HIV/Aids were the main strategies of this programme, he added.

Under the Enhanced HIV/Aids Programme Punjab, he said that there was a greater focus on improving knowledge, developing skills and creating enabling environment for HIV/Aids prevention activities. He said the government was providing adequate and appropriate information, provision of a defined package of preventive and curative services and advocacy with stakeholders and policy makers.

He said that greater focus of the programme was on providing services to vulnerable population, including drug users, jail inmates and long distance truck drivers. He said that services for these high-risk groups were currently being provided in six big cities —- Lahore, Multan, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi, Sargodha and Sialkot. He said that the services would soon be extended to other districts soon.

Dr Javed said the government had promoted the involvement of NGOs and private sector to such a great extent that most of community-based interventions were being implemented through them.

For the general population, he said, the HIV/Aids programme envisaged implementation of activities designed in the light of a specific behaviour change communication strategy involving electronic media, print media, capacity building workshops through inter-personal communication and displaying billboard at identified spots.

He said the programme would also contribute towards improvement in blood safety by expanding services for screening of blood and blood products. Diagnostic kits for testing HIV/Aids and Hepatitis-B had been provided to 119 blood banks and 12 HIV Surveillance Centres in the province through Punjab Aids Control Programme.