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Pakistan At "High Risk" From AIDS Epidemic
ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Health officials here Friday warned that Pakistan is at "high risk" from the AIDS epidemic although less than 200 cases have been recorded in the country since 1986.
Non-government health workers are less cautious, saying the epidemic is about to "explode" in Pakistan unless the government does more to educate people about safe sex and the dangers of intravenous drug abuse.
The National AIDS Program's latest figures show 11 new AIDS cases and 65 new HIV cases were reported this year, bringing the total recorded HIV/AIDS cases since 1986 to 1,699.
But U.N. and government estimates put the number of HIV/AIDS cases here closer to 74,000, with the vast majority going unreported due to social taboos about sex and victims' fears of discrimination, officials said.
Health ministry official Birjees M. Kazi said widespread intravenous drug abuse, poor awareness of safe sex and prostitution both here and in the Pakistani diaspora abroad threatened to fuel the spread of the disease.
"With the issues of drug abuse, unsafe sex and denial, we call it a high risk situation in Pakistan," Kazi said.
"We are aware of these things but it cannot be taken care of properly until the community as a whole is mobilized, and institutional mobilization is required."
He said people with HIV/AIDS were discriminated against once their problem became public, but the message the government was trying to project was that "no one is immune from misfortune."
"Because they hide we do not know where they contracted HIV and to whom they transmitted the virus," Kazi said.
U.N. Drug Control Program representative Bernard Frahi said that with some 1.5 million heroin users in Pakistan, needle sharing was a major concern for health workers tracking AIDS here.
A recent study of some 200 heroin addicts in the eastern city of Lahore found none with HIV but 89% with Hepatitis C, which is transmitted in the same way, UNAIDS representative Kristan Schoultz said.
"The behavioral assessment [of the addicts] also indicated very high levels of sharing equipment and very limited knowledge of how blood born infections are transmitted," she said.
Saleem Azam, whose Karachi-based non-government organization, Pakistan Society, runs one of the only drug rehabilitation centers in Pakistan, said last week that needle sharing was rife among urban drug addicts.
"Definitely the AIDS problem will explode and it will be horrible. It's only a matter of time," he said.
Some 62% of Pakistanis with HIV contracted it through heterosexual relations, but the government's efforts to raise awareness about the epidemic have been frustrated by strict social taboos in this deeply Islamic country.
A national AIDS campaign in Friday's newspapers makes no mention of the word "condom," and instead urges people to "Practice safety and protect your near and loved ones."
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