PESHAWAR, Feb 18: Speakers at a seminar here have cited social discrimination as the main obstacle in the way of creating awareness about HIV/Aids.

The number of patients in the Frontier province was 442, most of them recently been deported from the United Arab Emirate and some other countries, said Dr Bilal Khan, deputy manager of the NWFP HIV/Aids Control Programme while speaking at the seminar entitled "Right-based approach to HIV/Aids", held at a local hotel on Thursday.

Women and children are more vulnerable to HIV/Aids as both socially and economically depended upon their male members, he said. Speakers also delivered lectures on epidemiology of HIV/Aids, concepts of right-based approach, barriers and strategies to overcome challenges, and exploring connections of HIV/Aids and human rights.

Dr Bilal said that the government had taken a number of steps to ensure protection of general masses and underlined that these days screened blood transfusion was carried out in all hospitals.

He informed that the patients from the NWFP get HIV virus during their stay in Dubai and when this was disclosed to the government they were deported to Pakistan. He said that in some cases these deportees kept their ailment secret and in case of marriage the virus was transferred to women and to their babies.

He believed that lack of awareness caused by communication barriers has been the main hurdle in educating general masses. Mohammad Ayub of the Dost Welfare Foundation in his presentation briefly discussed the potential barriers in the way of spreading information about HIV/Aids in society and said that in some cases the national law falls in contrast with the international law set for protection of basic human rights.

He was of the view that unless the general masses were not properly told about the severity of the disease, it would be hard to control the menace. Meanwhile Nosheen Malik of PVDP underlined the need of equal Access to women to life related information so that they could protect themselves against transmitting diseases like HIV/Aids.