Bangladesh: HIV prevalence rises to 4 pc
By, The New Nation, June 12, 2007
The rate of HIV prevalence increased from 1.4 per cent to 4 per cent in past three years in the country.
Injecting drug users are 20,000 to 40,000, heroine smokers 30,000, female sex workers at street, brothel and hotel are 54,000 to 90,000, male sex workers and males who have sex with males are 40,000 to 150,000 and hijras 10,000 to 15,000 in the country at present.
In injecting drug users, HIV prevalence increased 4 to 7 .1 per cent in last four years.
Due to low condom use and sharing needles, high-risk behaviour people are increasing in the country every day.
This was disclosed at a national workshop on 'Advocacy Experiences and HIV/AIDS Mainstreaming' organised by Padakhep Manabik Unnayan Kendra (PMUK) in support with the National AIDS/STD Programme and Save the Children at Officers' Club in the city yesterday.
Maj Gen (Retd) Dr ASM Matiur Rahman, Adviser to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Water Resources and Religious Affairs, addressed the workshop as chief guest.
Md Abdul Karim, Secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs, M Ataur Rahman, Secretary of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, M Didarul Anwar, Secretary of the Ministry of Information, Sheikh Md Wahid-uz-Zaman, Secretary of the Ministry of Science and IT, Md Abdus Sabur, Secretary In-charge of the Ministry of Chittagong Hill Tract Affairs, Md Golam Mostafa Talukder, Secretary, In-charge of the Ministry of Youth and Sports, Abdul Awal Majumder, Additional Secretary of the Ministry of Education, Rokeya Sultana, Secretary, In-charge of the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs, Dr Nizam Uddin Ahmed, Director of HIV/AIDS Programme, Iqbal Ahammed, Executive Director of the PMUK, Kelland Stevenson, Country Director of Save the Children USA, Dr Md Hanif Uddin, Programme Manager of the National AIDS/STD Programme, among others, spoke, while Jamil Osman, Additional Secretary of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare chaired the session.
Health Adviser said the government is going to introduce HIV/AIDS test for the external migrants. Some 14,000 people are infected HIV/AIDS in the world everyday. But in Bangladesh, this rate is too low.
"If everybody of the country follow the rules to prevent the HIV/AIDS and also follow the religious taboos, HIV/AIDS can not be spread in the country," he also said.
The government will take more steps to prevent the HIV/AIDS in the country with including NGOs, representatives of the civil society and media personnel very soon, he added.
© Copyright 2003 by The New Nation
Source: http://nation.ittefaq.com/artman/publish/article_36768.shtml
The rate of HIV prevalence increased from 1.4 per cent to 4 per cent in past three years in the country.
Injecting drug users are 20,000 to 40,000, heroine smokers 30,000, female sex workers at street, brothel and hotel are 54,000 to 90,000, male sex workers and males who have sex with males are 40,000 to 150,000 and hijras 10,000 to 15,000 in the country at present.
In injecting drug users, HIV prevalence increased 4 to 7 .1 per cent in last four years.
Due to low condom use and sharing needles, high-risk behaviour people are increasing in the country every day.
This was disclosed at a national workshop on 'Advocacy Experiences and HIV/AIDS Mainstreaming' organised by Padakhep Manabik Unnayan Kendra (PMUK) in support with the National AIDS/STD Programme and Save the Children at Officers' Club in the city yesterday.
Maj Gen (Retd) Dr ASM Matiur Rahman, Adviser to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Water Resources and Religious Affairs, addressed the workshop as chief guest.
Md Abdul Karim, Secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs, M Ataur Rahman, Secretary of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, M Didarul Anwar, Secretary of the Ministry of Information, Sheikh Md Wahid-uz-Zaman, Secretary of the Ministry of Science and IT, Md Abdus Sabur, Secretary In-charge of the Ministry of Chittagong Hill Tract Affairs, Md Golam Mostafa Talukder, Secretary, In-charge of the Ministry of Youth and Sports, Abdul Awal Majumder, Additional Secretary of the Ministry of Education, Rokeya Sultana, Secretary, In-charge of the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs, Dr Nizam Uddin Ahmed, Director of HIV/AIDS Programme, Iqbal Ahammed, Executive Director of the PMUK, Kelland Stevenson, Country Director of Save the Children USA, Dr Md Hanif Uddin, Programme Manager of the National AIDS/STD Programme, among others, spoke, while Jamil Osman, Additional Secretary of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare chaired the session.
Health Adviser said the government is going to introduce HIV/AIDS test for the external migrants. Some 14,000 people are infected HIV/AIDS in the world everyday. But in Bangladesh, this rate is too low.
"If everybody of the country follow the rules to prevent the HIV/AIDS and also follow the religious taboos, HIV/AIDS can not be spread in the country," he also said.
The government will take more steps to prevent the HIV/AIDS in the country with including NGOs, representatives of the civil society and media personnel very soon, he added.
© Copyright 2003 by The New Nation
Source: http://nation.ittefaq.com/artman/publish/article_36768.shtml
posted by AIDS-Care-Watch at 10:01 am
1 Comments:
Facing the Challenges of HIV/AIDS
Around the world, more than 47 million people are now infected with the HIV/AIDS, It is now a weapon of mankind destruction. It has killed more than 30 million people worldwide according to UNAID and WHO reports since the 1st of December 1981 when it was first recognized. This makes it the worst recorded pandemic in the history of pandemics against mankind. In 2006 alone, it was reported to have killed between 2.5 to 3.5 million people with more than 380000 as children. The large number of these people killed is from the sub Saharan Africa. In some Sub-Saharan African countries, HIV/AIDS is expected to lower life expectancy by as much as 25 years.
AIDS is no longer a problem of medication. It is a problem of development. It is not just an individual hardship. It also threatens to decimate the future prospects of poor countries, wiping away years of hard-won improvements in development indicators. As a result of the disease, many poor countries are witnessing a worsening in child survival rates, reduced life expectancy, crumbling and over-burdened health care systems, the breakdown of family structures and the decimation of a generation in the prime of their working lives.
Bangladesh's socio-economic status, traditional social ills, cultural myths on sex and sexuality and a huge population of marginalised people make it extremely vulnerable to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Everyone buying sex in Bangladesh is having unprotected sex some of the time, and a large majority don’t use condoms most of the time. Behaviors that bring the highest risk of infection in Bangladesh are unprotected sex between sex workers and their clients, needle sharing and unprotected sex between men.
Though the country overall has a low prevalence rate, it has reported concentrated epidemics among vulnerable population such as IDUs. There are already localized epidemics within vulnerable groups in, and the virus would spread among the IDUs’ family or sexual partner.
In many poor countries, commercial female sex workers are frequently exposed to HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs/STDs). Where sex workers have poor access to health care and HIV prevention services, HIV prevalence can be as high as 50-90%. Evidence shows that targeted prevention interventions in sex work settings can turn the pandemic around.
Bangladesh is a high prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases, particularly among commercial sex workers; there are available injection drug users and sex workers all over the country, low condom use in the general population. Considering the high prevalence of HIV risk factors among the Bangladeshi population, HIV prevention research is particularly important for Bangladesh. It is very awful, several organization in Bangladesh are working only to prevent HIV/AIDS but few of them like as ‘Rainbow Nari O Shishu Kallyan Foundation’ try to develop proper strategic plane, so should increase research based organization recently.
Poverty in Bangladesh is a deeply entrenched and complex phenomenon. Sequentially, the HIV/AIDS epidemic amplifies and become deeper poverty by its serious economic impact on individuals, households and different sectors of the economy. Poverty is the reason why messages of prevention and control do not make an impact on a vast majority of the vulnerable population.
Sources: World Bank, UNAIDS, UNICEF.
Kh. Zahir Hossain
M & E Specialist (BWSPP)
The World Bank
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Mobile: 01711453171
Zahir.hossain@gmail.com
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