Review '96 national policy document on HIV/Aids

They urged the government to develop an effective national action plan to prevent HIV infection and form a divisional level coordination committee for enhanced inter-departmental coordination.

The workshop titled 'Key Stakeholders on HIV Risk Reduction', was organised by South-South Centre in partnership with the Family Health International.

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Health Minister Dr Khandeker Mosharraf Hossain spoke as the chief guest while Tara Nicole O'da, deputy director of Family Health International, gave the address of welcome.

Bangladesh is still considered a low prevalence country with the HIV infection rate of less than one percent among the adult population, but the HIV prevalence among the IDUs has gone up from 1.8 percent in 2001 to four percent in 2004, said the minister.

He also called for taking preventive measures such as supply of sterile syringes and needles, compulsory screening of blood and raising awareness about the killer disease.

The speakers suggested formation of a lead working group for inter-ministerial coordination on the issues of injecting drug use (IDUs) and prevention of HIV transmission among the ministries of home, health, law and justice and information.

They also recommended that intensive sensitisation activities at the policy and senior programme manager level be undertaken within and across the ministries.

South-South Centre Director Jalaluddin Ahmed said the fifth round of the surveillance report is quite alarming as it shows increasing trends of HIV prevalence among the vulnerable groups especially IDUs. He said this while presenting the keynote paper.

Raising an alarm on the possible transmission of HIV among the general population,Jalaluddin said IDUs have special characteristics they are sexually very active and mobile without adequate knowledge on HIV transmission and most importantly, the existing healthcare services are neither user friendly nor do they respond to their needs. In fact, all these indicate that we are waiting for a time bomb to explode."

"According to Who and UNAIDS, HIV infection among the IDUs in Bangladesh has already crossed the concentrated epidemic level which clearly gives us a warning signal. It is time for us to act now," he added.

The speakers pointed out that there is insufficient coverage of interventions, poor access to treatment facilities and insufficient programmes to cover IUDs.

Kamaluddin Ahmed, director general of the Department of Narcotics Control and Brig Gen (Retd) A S M Motinur Rahman, chairman of National Aids Technical Committee, attended the programme among others.