45,000 HIV/AIDS infected people reside in Sindh: SACP

By Our Staff Reporter

Karachi: The Sindh AIDS Control Programme’s (SACP) provincial manager, Dr Mohammad Younis Chachar, said here that two new centres for the treatment of HIV/AIDS patients will be set up shortly at the city’s Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre and Abbasi Shaheed Hospital.

Besides, seven similar centres will be established in other cities of Sindh, he added.

He was speaking at an orientation session on the “Role of Media Profession in Prevention of HIV/AIDS in Sindh” organized by the SACP to mark the `World AIDS Day’, which is observed on Dec 1, each year. Officials of the SACP, including Dr Farhat, Dr Qamar Abbas and Dr Sikander Iqbal, were also present on the occasion. 
Dr Chachar said that management of SACP has deiced to establish nine more HIV/AIDS treatment and diagnostic centres across the province.

He also informed that divisional and district level task force will devise strategy to control the prevalence HIV/AIDS in Sindh through a proper monitoring and surveillance system. Besides, campaigns aimed at creating awareness among masses about HIV/AIDS will be launched with the cooperation of religious scholars, media persons and health care providers, he added.

At the outset, SACP’s Dr Sikander Iqbal said that in all 1,157 HIV/AIDS positive cases - 1,017 male, 122 female and 18 transgender - were reported during 2015, while 304 people had died from HIV/AIDS since 2004 and 26 met the same fate by now, this year. 

He told the audience that an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 HIV/AIDS infected people are living in Pakistan and of them 45,000 are in Sindh.
He said  major high risk groups of HIV/AIDS prevalence include long-distance truck drivers, female sex workers, transgender sex workers, men having sex with men (MSMs), injecting drug users (IDUs), jail inmates, children born to infected parents, street children and victims of unsafe medical procedures.