The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) has warned that Pakistan could face an Africa-like situation in the next three to five years with respect to HIV/AIDS.
The UNAIDS officials in Pakistan have based their inference on the observation of rising prevalence of the disease among injectable drug users (IDUs), the transgender community and sex workers.
They said on Wednesday that HIV/AIDS prevalence among IDUs had jumped to 48 per cent in Karachi during the past five years, which meant that of the 100 IDUs, 48 were infected with HIV/AIDS and had the potential to pass on the deadly infection to others.
Quoting the provisional results of the fifth round of the Integrated Behavioural & Biological Surveillance (IBBS), which concluded last month, UNAIDS officials said HIV/AIDS prevalence among IDUs was 38 per cent in entire Pakistan and 21.9 per cent in Sindh, but in Karachi it was increasing and had reached up to 48 per cent.
“This is a very alarming situation, because at the moment HIV/AIDS is confined to a concentrated group of people, including IDUs and the transgender community, in Pakistan,” Dr Mamadou Sakho, country director for UNAIDS Pakistan & Afghanistan, told a group of health journalists in Karachi.
“But if appropriate measures are not taken, this epidemic can spread to the generalised population and it would turn into an Africa-like situation here.”
Dr Mamadou, who is from Senegal in West Africa, said that there were approximately 6 million drug users in Pakistan, and HIV/AIDS prevalence among this group of people was on the rise due to lack of awareness and advocacy.
“Karachi, having one of the world’s largest populations, has a large number of IDUs who are infected with the deadly disease and have the potential to spread it to the general public.”
The UNAIDS official blamed issues of governance, transparency and malpractices in dealing with the epidemic of HIV/AIDS, and warned that if the problem was not tackled with full force, Pakistan could face consequences like African countries, including South Africa, Mozambique and Botswana, where the infection had spread to the general public and wiped out their generations.
“I ask the Pakistani authorities not to wait until they turn into an African country, because you have all the signs of facing a situation like that of African countries, where HIV/AIDS epidemics destroyed the social fabric and economy. Use all the resources at your disposal to deal with it now, or within three to five years it would be an uncontrollable situation for Pakistan.”
Urging journalists to play their role in dissemination of information among people regarding HIV/AIDS, its modes of transmission, prevention and treatment, Dr Mamadou said prevention was the only option for countries like Pakistan, which had meagre resources to spend on health care.
He reiterated that the media should play its role in spreading awareness about methods to prevent HIV/AIDS, its spread to other people and its treatment, through which quite a normal life could be spent.
“At the moment the situation is very alarming in Pakistan, especially in Karachi. If proper steps are not taken now, in three to five years this infection would spread to the common people from IDUs, the transgender community and male and female sex workers. After that, it would spread with sexual relations and there would be no stopping that.”
Dr Rajwal Khan, strategic information adviser of UNAIDS in Pakistan, shared the provisional data of IBBS 2017 with the journalists, saying that the prevalence of HIV/AIDS among the transgender community in Pakistan was 7.5 per cent, followed by 5.6 per cent in male sex workers and 2.2 per cent in female sex workers.
Dr Sufia Furqan, an expert from the National AIDS Control Programme in Islamabad, spoke about the federal government’s efforts in curbing the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the county, but added that as health was now a provincial subject, respective provincial governments were taking measures to prevent its spread and control its spread to the general public.
2nd AIDS treatment centre
Dr Yunus Chachar, programme manager for the Sindh AIDS Control Programme, announced that Karachi’s second HIV/AIDS treatment centre would start functioning at the Aga Khan University Hospital on Friday
“Four more HIV/AIDS treatment centres would be established in Sukkur, Nawabshah, Mirpurkhas and Hyderabad in the coming months so that people of these cities and the surrounding areas could be treated closer to their homes.”
Dr Chachar said district family health centres and information centres had also been planned under the new PC-1 of the AIDS control programme. He urged UNAIDS to train doctors and general practitioners in treating patients with the deadly infection, as many hospitals and doctors were still reluctant to admit and treat patients with HIV/AIDS at their health facilities.
The interactive session was also addressed by Dr Fehmida Iqbal from UNAIDS and Dr Qamar Abbas, an HIV/AIDS specialist associated with the Sindh Health Department.