- Pakistan is second largest country in South Asia with HIV epidemic
ISLAMABAD: Despite alarming increase in HIV cases, the cash-starved National AIDS Control Programme (NACP) is struggling to reverse the rising tide since the government did not spend a single penny on the programme, Pakistan Today has learnt reliably.
During the last three decades, the HIV pandemic has introduced as an incomprehensible calamity. HIV and AIDS have already taken a terrible human toll, laying claim to millions of lives, inflicting pain and grief, causing fear and uncertainty.
Pakistan is the second largest country in South Asia that stands only a few steps behind India and Nepal in terms of HIV epidemic. Despite such alarming situation, the officials said that the Ministry of National Health Services Regulation is just paying the salary of the staffers, while the Global Funds is bearing the expense of medicines.
The NACP was established in 1986-87 with a focus on diagnosis of the cases that came to hospitals but progressively began to shift towards a community focus. At present, the programme is facing myriad problems due to massive financial crunch mainly caused by the dull response and apathy towards the health sector.
The officials said that the NACP had well-trained 13-member staff, but they have nothing to do since they have no funds, as the ministry earmarked no funds under any head for the programme except the salary, which they were given after eleventh months. They questioned as how they could run public awareness campaigns when they have no money to pay telephone bills due to which six out of eight telephone connections were cut.
Moreover, the officials lamented that they even have no money to purchase stationary and pen and quickly added that the long-abandoned eight luxurious vehicles are rotting in the park due to non-availability of the funds for fuel and repairing. They narrated the ordeal that they have no fund to replace the generator’s battery and to pay bills of gas, water and building’s rent, what to talk of formulating a policy.
EXPIRED CONDOMS: The officials said that look at the non-seriousness of the high-ups, as the condoms were expired since July-last, but no request has been sent to UNICEF which provides free of cost. A senior official in the Health Ministry said that since the devolution, the role of the health ministry is quite limited, as it mere spends money on holding seminars and foreign trips rather on the public good.
As the number of new HIV infections has declined drastically at the global level, but Pakistan remains one of the few regional countries to witness an increasing number of the cases. “Even then, no funds are allocated,” they said. According to a recently-released survey report of (HIV/AIDS) Integrated Biological & Behavioural Surveillance (IBBS) launched by the Ministry of Health, the global estimation in Pakistan is around 130,000 PLWH who’re suffering from this deadly virus.
As many as 50% are in Punjab, 43% in Sindh, five percent in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) and two percent in Balochistan. The HIV prevalence in various key populations: people who inject drugs (38.4%), transgender sex workers (7.5%), male sex workers (5.2%), men who have sex with men (5.1%) and female sex workers (2.2%).
When contacted, NACP National Programme Manager Dr Baseer Khan Achakzai said that it was true they don’t have enough money at federal and provincial level to curb the disease in a holistic manner. But few provinces have allocated some money for few areas of treatment facilities but “we need much more funding for prevention of HIV in all four key populations.”
However, he said that they primarily support provinces to devise their provincial AIDS strategies and they have developed Pakistan AIDS Strategy-111 till 2020 which is a comprehensive document approved by all stakeholders and put forward for implementations. “We made our funding request to the Global Fund (GF) based on Pakistan AIDS Strategy,” he said.
“We have established so far 27 HIV/AIDS treatment centres and 22 community home-based testing centres, besides establishing 11 prevention parents to child transmission centres (PPCTC) in all four provinces where the caseload is high. So far, more than 22,000 HIV cases registered with us and around 9,000 are on treatment,” he said.
Dr Baseer said that since federal unite of HIV has been established as a coordination unit for the Global Fund-supported activities, therefore no resources allocated for other activities of HIV prevention which is critical in some instances like provision of drugs for other opportunistic infection which needs support from NACP.
He accepted the fact that they were totally relying on HIV test kits and ARVs on the Global Funds, since ARVs, the drugs for treatment are not available in Pakistan. “Awareness about HIV is so crucial that the people must know how it spreads and how it could be prevented, but the awareness campaigns need a lot of funds, which we don’t have currently. Neither the GF provides the fund for this activity,” he said.
“The awareness campaign is our responsibility so the Press Information Department and the media should come forward to play their social corporate responsibility to support us in advocacy social mobilisation and communications,” the senior official said.