IT is a travesty that, decades after HIV/AIDS first perplexed medics, awareness about the disease remains low in Pakistan, particularly among vulnerable populations. As HIV/AIDS incidents drop worldwide — in 2023, some 39.9m people lived with HIV; 53pc are women and girls — Pakistan’s figures are proliferating. According to UNAIDS, the country’s HIV cases stood at 270,000 in 2022, while The Lancet forecasts HIV pervasiveness to be less than 0.1pc in the general population with some 165,000 people living with the virus. On World AIDS Day, the country’s second fastest rate of HIV escalation in the Asia-Pacific region should put its health officials and policymakersto the test for their callous and outdated collective response: vigilance, information and testing initiatives are virtually non-existent, and the stigma attached to the infection is unaddressed. This year, the UN notes that the presence of AIDS mandates that “we reach and engage everyone who is living with, at risk for or affected by HIV … This World AIDS Day is a call to action to protect everyone’s health by protecting everyone’s rights. Leaders need to take the rights path”.

Despite AIDS becoming more manageable due to medical advancements, related complications claimed 630,000 lives last year. This alone should fill the authorities with a sense of foreboding as the onus of the spread falls largely on health providers in Pakistan — scores contract the virus through infected medical equipment and poorly screened blood samples; the most recent health debacle at Multan’s Nishtar Hospital serves as a horrific instance. This day must be viewed as a rallying call for enhanced action through scaled-up testing, oversight to reduce the risk of transmission, advocacy to transform societal attitudes, and heightened screening for sexual abuse victims, jail inmates and children. Pakistan does not have time on its side; for HIV/AIDS to end as a public health threat by 2030, the right to health must become sacrosanct.

Published in Dawn, December 1st, 2024