Against all odds: Pakistan seeks $11 million for its fight against AIDS

Another $8 million requested from UNAIDS for a national survey to verify the number of patients

ISLAMABAD:

Pakistan on Tuesday submitted a proposal to the Global Fund, seeking $11 million to continue its fight against HIV/AIDs. At the same time, Pakistan is requesting $1 million from UNAIDS to carry out a national survey to find out the accurate number of people living with the deadly disease.

However it is estimated that in Pakistan 91,000 people are living with HIV/AIDs out of which only 10,000-12,000 are registered. The government is still clueless about the rest of the 80,000 people who are living across the country and are a potential threat to its spread.

Talking to The Express Tribune, National AIDS Control Programme (NACP) manager Dr Baseer Khan Achakzai said Pakistan has funds till the end of this year for the prevention and treatment of the disease. However, requests have been made for more funds to continue the fight against the disease for the year 2016.

Global Funds is a multi-billion dollar international financing mechanism that gives funds to countries for fighting against three major diseases which includes HIV/AIDs, malaria and tuberculosis.

For the next year, he said, their main focus will be to track down people who are living with HIV/AIDs and have not yet registered themselves for the treatment.

He was of the view that majority of these people are either immigrants, sex workers or drug addicts who are reluctant to disclose themselves as HIV positive, because of the stigma attached to this disease.

“These people have become a major hurdle in our way to control the spread of the disease and need to be reached on an immediate basis,” he said.

Achakzai said once the amount is released by the Global Fund, Pakistan is looking forward to introduce 10 satellite vans across the country where the prevalence rate of people living with HIV/AIDs is high -- in an attempt to track them down and register them for treatment.

Moreover, for the first time Management Information System (MIS) will be introduced in Pakistan for online registration and maintaining data of people with HIV/AIDs, he added.

Free food and education will also be provided to the children of person with the disease so that their families would not get affected by their disease during treatment, he said.

He further disclosed that the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has shown interest for procuring medicines which will be used for the treatment of HIV/AIDs patients next year onwards.

Earlier Global Funds was procuring these drugs but the UNDP has expressed concern over the high cost of the drugs and declared they would be procuring them for 2016, he said.

Talking to The Express Tribune, Community Mobilization and Networking Advisor with UNAIDS Country Office for Pakistan and Afghanistan Fehmida Iqbal said, “There is a dire need to reduce the huge gap between the number of people living with HIV/AIDs and who are registered with the government”

Considering the stigma attached to the disease the UNAIDS is planning to introduce community based HIV testing mechanism through which the teams will visit hot spots such as places where sex workers and drug users are living and test them there, she said.

Iqbal said recently an increase has been witnessed in the number of HIV positive people in Punjab and Sindh.

After the devolution of health ministry under the 18th Amendment, Sindh is the only province in the country that has HIV/AIDs Control Law; however, it is the need of the hour for every province to have its own law, she said.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 22^nd, 2015.