PESHAWAR, Oct 21: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department intends to compile health history of families in the province to ascertain HIV/Aids risk to public health, says an official.

Of late, the department launched a family care centre, the first in South Asia, for HIV/Aids patients at Peshawar's Hayatabad Medical Complex. The centre for which Unicef is providing equipment and technical support offers counseling, treatment and other medical facilities to patients under one roof.

“We've planned a Family Health Day project to put together health history of all families in the province so that we can learn about risk of their life to HIV/Aids,” Dr Nasira Yasinzai, coordinator of Prevention of Parent-to-Child Transmission of HIV/Aids programme at HMC, told Dawn on Friday.

Dr Nasira said detection of lots of HIV cases in an area near Gujrat in Punjab due to carelessness of a quack led the department into planning the project, which would be carried out by social mobilisers and lady health workers.

According to her, HMC has registered 787 HIV/Aids patients, including 37 children, 560 men and 190 women, since 2005.

The centre doesn't mention HIV/Aids on its board at the main entrance due to a strong social stigma attached to the killer disease in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and adjoining Federally Administered Tribal Areas Tribal Areas, where Unicef sees HIV as a 'family disease' for locals transmitting it to their wives before they produce HIV-infected children.

Mostly locals believe that prostitution is the only cause for the transmission of the disease, thus forcing its sufferer into isolation as a sinner.

Dr Nasira said around 80 per cent of HIV/Aids cases received by HMC were usually from the families of migrant workers, especially those employed in Middle East.

She said HIV/Aids sufferers were often deported without being educated about their problem and once they reached home, they didn't tell their families about the killer disease and transmitted it to their wives.

“The focus of Family Health Day project is to make people aware of HIV/Aids and check their health history, especially use of injections and blood transfusions,” she said.

The programme coordinator said members of suspected families would be invited to health facilities in their respective areas and in case of any positive symptoms, they would be referred to the HMC family care centre.