KARACHI: Govt HIV programme to focus on spouses, children of drug users
KARACHI, Feb 15: The Sindh Aids Control Programme has proposed a project aimed at offering care and support for the wives and children of injecting drug users (IDUs) across the province, to be implemented in the next few months, Dawn has learnt.
According to well-placed sources, the federal government recently asked the provinces to ensure that greater awareness was created about the issue. The provincial authorities were further asked to implement counselling and screening programmes for the spouses and children of IDUs, and to extend social and financial support to families suffering because of HIV/Aids.
The provinces have been asked to reallocate their budgets and reschedule projects for the next five years for the purpose. The budgets and projects are currently under review for the provision of finances from the federal government, a source added.
The Sindh Aids Control Programme (SACP) has already submitted a revised PC-1, comprising several programmes aimed at bringing about behavioural changes amongst high-risk groups. The SACP plans to put into place surveillance, intervention and service delivery mechanisms for IDUs, male and transvestite sex workers, female sex workers and jail inmates.
The initiatives proposed by the SACP will cost Rs1.74 billion, which will be furnished by the provincial and federal governments, with some financing also being negotiated with foreign development and donor agencies.
Low registration
While experts and health workers in the country estimate that there are currently between 35,000 to 40,000 cases of HIV/Aids in Sindh, the SACP was only able to register 2,436 cases in 2008. The cases registered include 2,268 patients suffering from HIV and 168 patients suffering from Aids.
According to a survey, which ended in April 2008, high-risk groups for HIV, including male IDUs and male and eunuch sex workers, lived largely in Karachi, Hyderabad and Larkana. Of the IDUs in Karachi, 36.8 per cent were considered to be at risk of HIV infection, while 37.4 per cent were at risk in Larkana and 25 per cent in Hyderabad.
According to well-placed sources, the government has been focusing on IDUs in the last couple of years through increased interventions and service delivery packages, but there is now a great need to create awareness amongst, and offer counselling and screening to, the children and wives of these drug users. These efforts, the sources say, will provide the necessary support to eliminate chances of transmission of HIV to the next generation.
The tendency of IDUs to frequently share syringes/needles has not only made them vulnerable to HIV, it has also increased the possibility of spreading the infection to their wives and future generations. Such infections enable the virus to make inroads into the general population, the sources said.
The provincial manager of the government’s Aids control programme, Dr M. Nasir Jalbani, told Dawn that the necessity of extending care and support to IDUs and their families was discussed at a meeting of the Planning Commission of Pakistan in Islamabad recently. The PC was deliberating over various projects submitted by the provinces for the prevention and control of HIV/Aids in the next five years.
“In the interior of Sindh, as well as in Karachi, some NGO-run programmes for drug-users are in place, in addition to some drop-in centres for syringe exchange, etc, and we have now decided to ask the NGOs, which would be entrusted with the harm-reduction and rehabilitation jobs, to include activities for IDUs’ families as well,” Dr Jalbani said.
Regarding the PC-1 submitted by the SACP for the next five years (July 2008 to June 2013), Dr Jalbani said that small grants or projects would also be floated in the cases of adolescent risk groups and street children, especially in fishing villages and labour colonies. He said funds would also be provided to strengthen centres meant to check sexually transmitted infections. Two more centres for the prevention of ‘parents-to-child transmission’ will be set up in Larkana and Hyderabad or Nawabshah, in addition to the two such centres already functioning at the two government hospitals of Karachi.