Stigma

Thursday, March 06, 2008

Bangladesh: Stronger HIV policy needed

By, Reuters, February 19, 2008

Insufficient data, coupled with the lack of a coherent HIV prevention policy, are undermining Bangladesh's national AIDS programme, say health experts.

"We need to gather stronger empirical data and relate all problems faced by HIV/AIDS, with a special emphasis on the use of condoms by all who need them," said Dan Odallo, country coordinator of UNAIDS in Bangladesh.

Among intravenous drug users (IDUs), HIV has already become a concentrated epidemic - when five percent or more members of any high-risk group are infected.

"In more than one IDU cluster in Dhaka [the capital], 7.5 percent HIV-positive cases have been diagnosed recently," said Dr Mohammad Hanifuddin, director of the government's project to combat sexually transmitted infections (STI) and HIV.

Most of Bangladesh's more than 150 million inhabitants are largely unaware of the risk factors; moreover, many seldom practice safe sex, including condom usage, warned Prof Nazrul Islam, head of the department of virology at the Sheikh Mujib Medical University in Dhaka.

Poor official statistics

Although there are only 1,207 officially confirmed HIV-positive cases, national estimates put the number of people living with HIV in the world's eighth most populated nation closer to 7,500 but the real number could be several times higher.

"Most of these people do not go to the laboratories for a test," said Shahnaz Begum of Durjoy Mohila Shongho, a national NGO working with street-based commercial sex workers, citing the social stigma associated with the disease. "They only go to the labs when they are either compelled or enticed to. The official statistics are just the tip of an iceberg."

Islam noted that "The biggest problem facing the country's HIV/AIDS prevention and control programme is scanty statistics," and no one really knew what the true facts were.

Inept national AIDS programme

Source: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/0dc3a804d13d39b2029000c8ea81766b.htm

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