HYDERABAD: The Sindh health department intends to launch a mobile phone application to scale up the activities of the Communication Disease Control (CDC) with a view to encourage HIV-positive patients to get themselves registered and seek treatment.

This was stated by CDC deputy director-general Dr Syed Ershad Hussain Kazmi while speaking at a two-day interactive media training workshop titled the ‘Role of Media in Strengthening HIV Response’ which ended here on Friday.

“Currently, we have 15,952 patients registered in our system and the leftovers are present in different areas or localities who can be potential spreader of this otherwise treatable disease,” he said, adding that “the Sindh government is committed to eradicate the disease by 2030”.

Out of the 15,952 patients, 13,964 are receiving treatment from the department’s health facilities, according to him.

Dr Kazmi said that HIV prevalence was higher mostly among those who injected drugs. “Its prevalence among the general public is just 0.1pc; the prevalence ratio is higher in people like salesmen and female/transgender sex workers. But I can confidently state that situation is not alarming in Sindh,” he said.

The addicts who inject drugs could not be traced all the time. “They are found in one city today and in some other city the other day. We are now trying to get them registered through biometric with the help of community-based organisations (CBOs),” he said.

The CDC official said that everyone should take care of privacy and identity issue of the people living with HIV. “It is not that these are the people from lower strata of society or working class alone. But there are cases that have come from the affluent and are registered with us,” he said.

Dr Kazmi stressed that bringing the people living with HIV in the system was necessary in order to protect others. Otherwise, they would continue to serve as a potential threat, he said.

He pointed out that there were 190,000 HIV-positive cases in Pakistan and around 78,000 of them were in Sindh.

Referring to the sudden emergence of HIV-positive cases in Ratodero some time ago, he said that families of the patients were getting financial assistance out of Rs1bn endowment fund through their bank accounts.

Published in Dawn, August 28th, 2021