Moalims

Larkana—Provincial Program Manager Sindh AIDS Control Program Dr Muhammad Younis Chachar on Saturday disclosed that positive cases of HIV AIDS in Sindh are growing unabated despite of hectic efforts due to unawareness and lack of education, 80,000 suspected HIV AIDS patients are in Sindh while registered 8517 HIV and 235 AIDS cases Larkana district with 958 detected while un-registered are more than 15000, he expressed these views while addressing the journalists at Larkana Press Club.

He told that 0.1 million population of Pakistan is effected with HIV AIDS which is alarming situation and posing big threat to rest of population, adding that blood transfusion, sexual relations, effected syringes, unsterilized surgical and dental instru-ments could effect this lethal disease, children are either cases of mother-to-child HIV transmission or thalassemic afflicted with the deadly disease through contaminated blood transfusion are causes.

Mr Chachar informed that 6 more new diagnostic and treatment centers will be set up in different city of Sindh among Hyderabad, and Civil Hospitals of Benazirabad and Sukkur district, Mirpur Khass, Sanghar and Karachi.

DR Rajendar Kumar, DR Azra, DR Aneela and others told that 35 million people across the world lived with HIV of whom 3.2 million were aged less than 15 years, adding key high-risk HIV groups included long-distance truckers, female sex workers, transgender sex workers, men having sex with men, IDUs, jail inmates, children born to infected parents, street children and victims of unsafe blood transfu-sions.

It is pertinent to mention here that more than 70 blood laboratories are functioning without registration in Larkana and not following the policies of national program regarding the prevention of HIV aids during blood transfusion. Previous government had announced rehabilitation centre in Larkana to facilitate the affected patients, but it could not be setup after passing reasonable time.

Several NGOs are claiming to run the projects of million rupees to provide awareness among the people of Larkana, but they have failed to control growing rate of HIV patients only paper work and fake seminars are shown and proper funds is not being utilized on public awareness activities. Incharge central labora-tory Larkana Dr. Ghulam Shabir Shaikh told that 70 patients of HIV aids are registered in Larkana while the number of unregistered patients will be in hun-dreds. He said, people are still unaware of the cause of disease, so awareness programs should be arranged at villages to motivate the masses for prevention.

Ghulam Rasool