PESHAWAR, Aug 22: Speakers at a workshop urged the journalist community to use their pen to raise the much-needed awareness about the fatal disease of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (Aids) in order to save the people from being inflicted with the dreaded ailment.

The one-day seminar was arranged at the Peshawar Press Club by the Pakistan Village Development Programme (PVDP), a non-government organisation, on Thursday to educate journalists regarding Aids.

Dr Tariq Jabbar Khan, in charge of the casualty ward of the Khyber Teaching Hospital, dwelt at length on the killer disease and called upon the media persons to inform the people at large about the preventive measures in order to save them from falling victim to the disease.

According to him, the first patient of Aids was discovered in Pakistan way back in 1987 and today Pakistan had 1,700 victims against the WHO’s figure of 100,000.

Explaining the symptoms of Aids, Dr Khan said the patients complained of loss of weight, loss of appetite, running fever, soar throat, diarrhoea, generalised weakness, rashes on the body and pneumonia.

He said there was no treatment for Aids but the patients needed to be given symptomatic treatment in order to improve their quality of life. Aids was a global menace with 40 million people infected worldwide while another 5.3 million entered Aids club annually, said Dr Khan, adding that it had already killed 20 million people in the world.

However, he said Europe, where the disease had taken heavy toll of human lives, had now registered a sharp decline due to preventive measures adopted by the people there but, he lamented, despite having Islamic culture and values, the disease was spreading in the country with an alarming speed.

Nevertheless, he said, by following the tenets of Islam “we can keep the deadly infection at bay.”

The main cause of Aids, he said, was illicit sexual relation which was strictly forbidden in Islam.

The people working in Middle East countries, he added, were also a source of spreading the disease which needed to be checked.

About the causes of the disease, he said homosexuality, heterosexuality, use of unscreened blood, re-use of disposable syringes, use of unsterilised equipments, shave at barber’s shop and intravenous use of drugs were the main sources of the disease.

The disease, he further said, was transmittable from mother to newborn babies and sharing of disposable syringes.

Dr Khan stressed the need for preventive measures because there was no way out once the ailment afflicted someone.

The United States, where the first case of Aids was reported in early eighties, had been spending millions of dollars to invent vaccines and medicines to seek a cure but all such efforts had, so far, proved futile, he pointed out.

Dr Khan, however, expressed satisfaction that the world leaders had ultimately realised that it was a serious problem and, thus, arranged an international conference at Oslo where a demand of $9 billion had been made to do away with the scourge, of which, he said, $2 billion had been collected to be chanellized towards tackling the disease.

Earlier, Shazia Hina spoke about the activities of the PVDP in the NWFP.

She said her organisation was helping the poverty-stricken masses in developing sanitation, health and agricultural facilities to improve their lifestyle.

Shazia was of the opinion that poverty, ignorance and gender inequality were the main reasons hindering the progress of the people in this part of the world.