KARACHI, Nov 28: The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) that causes the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) has been spreading rapidly around the world, particularly among adult population.
According to WHO estimates, over 42 million people had been living with HIV/AIDS, five million people were newly infected with HIV and 3.1 million had succumbed to the disease by the end of 2002.
“Unless a strong preventive intervention is carried out and the life-prolonging therapy made more widely available, the disease may spread to countries with low endemicity such as Pakistan,” Dr Ghulam Nabi Kazi, the WHO Operations Officer for Sindh, cautioned in a statement the other day.
Dr Kazi mentioned that the disease was transmitted most commonly by sexual contact, direct contact with infected blood or blood components and from an infected mother to her unborn child. The HIV was also frequently spread through contaminated needles, syringes and other medical instruments, he added.
He stated that it was important to note that HIV was not transmitted by casual contact such as coughing, sneezing, touching, hugging, using household items such as utensils, towels, and bedding and sharing facilities such as swimming pools or toilets.
Dr Kazi said that as no vaccine was available for HIV, the only method to prevent infection was to avoid risky behaviours such as sharing needles and having extramarital sex. People should be made aware of the modes of transmission and prevention of HIV/AIDS.
Mentioning the treatment opportunities, he said that Pakistan was scaling up its nationwide HIV/AIDS programme linking prevention care and treatment with major focus on high-risk social groups of the population.
He said that the government of Pakistan was channelizing its response to the scourge of HIV/AIDS through the National AIDS Control Programme. This programme was an umbrella project coordinated through the federal cell, which gave the policy guidelines for implementation through provincial AIDS control programme, he added.
In Sindh, an enhanced HIV/AIDS control programme had been launched recently with financial support of the World Bank and technical support of the UN agencies such as WHO, UNAIDS and UNICEF and other bilateral development partners.
He said that the ministry of health had also endorsed a multi-sectoral National HIV/AIDS Strategic Framework for 2001- 2006. Through the recently promulgated ordinance on safe blood transfusion, the risk of HIV infection would be controlled by the mandatory screening of blood and blood products for HIV, Hepatitis B and C viruses, malaria and syphilis. This would significantly help in controlling these infections. The national HIV/AIDS enhanced programme was engaging other social sectors through coordinated advocacy and skill development programmes.
Dr Kazi said that stress was being laid rendering HIV/AIDS control interventions as integral pars of the primary healthcare and reproductive heath package. In this endeavour, the national programmes was focusing on HIV prevention as a priority since the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Pakistan was still at a very early stage, he added.
The WHO official mentioned that a number of vulnerbilities and patterns of risky behaviours signalled the need to take action. Since the official recognition of the first case in 1987, the number of officially reported HIV infections and AIDS cases had grown to over 2000.
The Director General of the World Health Organization, Dr Lee Jong Wook, described HIV/AIDS as a major catastrophe. Together with UNAIDS and other partners, he said, the WHO was leading the response to this global health emergency and was urging governments, donors, other international organizations, non- governmental organizations, people living with HIV/AIDS and industry to join together to ensure that the millions of people who urgently need anti-retroviral medicines would receive them.
All the stakeholder are developing a comprehensive global strategy, the details of which will be announced on Dec 1, 2003 on the occasion of the World AIDS Day. —APP