88 Afghan refugees infected with HIV/AIDS

PESHAWAR: As many as 88 Afghan refugees, including from the tribal regions, have tested positive for HIV/AIDS. They include 10 Afghan refugee women.

Sources in the provincial health department have said that the infected people are aged between 25 and 45 years and include both registered and unregistered Afghan nationals.

Sources said that authorities in Pakistan and Afghanistan have been known to have evolved a joint strategy to prevent HIV/AIDS among millions of Afghan refugees living in Pakistan.

According to the strategy, the Afghan refugees who contracted the virus through the use of contaminated injections would be identified, admitted and treated at a centre set up at the Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar.  The infected 88 Afghan refugees, residing at Hayatabad, Tehkal, Zaryab colony, Faqirabad and other neighbourhoods of the city prefer to be treated in Pakistan, instead of Afghanistan.

Pakistan has been hosting millions of Afghan refugees since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

Though some of them had been repatriated to their country after the withdrawal of the Red Army from the country, tens of thousands of Afghan nationals again fled a subsequent civil war in their country in the 1990s. Some of them are living in refugee camps – but a large number of them have settled in cities and towns of Pakistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 16^th, 2012.