At least 29 people died of HIV/AIDS across the Sindh province in 2014, said Provincial Programme Manager, Sindh AIDS Control Programme (SACP) Dr Sikander Ali Shah on Tuesday.
Dr Shah told PPI that 29 people expired last year due to AIDS throughout the province. These victims included 24 males, four females and one child. He said over 400 HIV/AIDS new cases were registered in 2014.
He said Sindh AIDS programme had registered 3,621 HIV/AIDS positive cases since 2006, out of them 3,079 are males, 408 females, 102 children and 32 transgender. He said all registered patients were receiving HIV/AIDS treatment from various centers. He said approximately 87,000 people are living with HIV/AIDs in Pakistan out of them 40 to 45 percent in Sindh.
He explained that 80 percent HIV/AIDS cases were reported from Karachi out of total registered patients in Sindh province but all infected people did not belong to Karachi or Sindh. He said five new AIDS diagnostic and treatment centers would be established in different cities of province soon and a PC-1 for these centers was under process.
Dr Shah said new diagnostic and treatment centers would establish in Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center Karachi, Abbasi Shaheed Hospital Karachi, besides hospitals in Hyderabad, Nawabshah and Mirpurkhas.
He said currently five diagnostic and treatment centers were operating under Sindh AIDS programme: two in Civil Hospital Karachi, one in Indus Hospital, one in Aga Khan Hospital and one in Larkana.
He said major high risk groups of HIV/AIDS prevalence were injecting drug users (IDUs), men having sex with men (MSMs), long distance truck drivers, female sex workers, transgender sex workers, jail inmates, children born to infected parent, street children and victims of unsafe medical procedures.
He further explained that HIV virus takes five to ten years to transform into AIDS disease. He said HIV virus generally decreases the immunity power but proper usage of medicines can help to increase patient’s immunity. He said Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) also working with Provincial AIDS Program under public private partnership to root out this disease from the province.
"did not belong to Karachi or Sindh."
Karachi is not outside of Sindh, just as Peshawar is not outside of KPK, or Lahore out of Punjab, or Quetta out of Balochistan. When will uninformed people like you come out of this prejudice?
Situation in Pakistan specially Sindh is getting worse. Government should take appropriate measure to stop spreading this deadly disease. Most of the people are muslims and they hesitate to talk about sex and practice unsafe methods.
Comments are closed.