Climate change may increase deaths from HIV/AIDS
Climate change is the latest threat to the world's growing HIV/AIDS epidemic, according to a group of Australian experts. A leading professor of health and human rights, Daniel Tarantola of the University of New South Wales, has warned that global warming will indirectly make people of developing countries even more vulnerable to death and severe ill-health from HIV/AIDS.
Prominent Australian HIV scientist, Professor David Cooper, Director of the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research opined that climate change will lead to food scarcity and poorer nutrition, putting people with perilous immune systems at more risk of dying of HIV, as well as contracting and transmitting new and unusual infections.
Experts identified certain factors that are interrelated to climate change can help kill more people with HIV/AIDS. Poverty, illiteracy, proximity, malnutrition, unemployment, slum housing, very mobile populations are closely related to climate change and may contribute to large number of deaths from AIDS.
The increasing mortality from these infectious diseases has had several negative consequences: decreasing economic productivity, increasing medical costs, and taxing already tenuous health care systems in poor countries. The rising frequency of extreme climatic events such as floods and droughts, render developing countries with increasingly less time to recover.
Although Bangladesh is a low prevalence country for HIV/AIDS, there are certain major risks that may lead to an epidemic if they are not controlled effectively. There are about 1,500 cases of HIV/Aids have been confirmed and reported — it was 1,207 in 2007 and 1,495 in 2008.The number of undetected cases is much higher. Bangladesh has an estimated 20,000-40,000 people who inject drugs Sharing injecting equipment increases the HIV risk (11.5 percent HIV positive cases were diagnosed recently in more than one IDU cluster in Dhaka,). In addition, increased number of migrant workers is also a major concern. More than 80 percent of the diagnosed HIV positive are migrant Bangladeshi workers and their wives. Now, the impacts of climate change can be a risk for increased number of deaths from HIV/AIDS here in Bangladesh.
So, policies and strategies for HIV/AIDS need to be implemented, monitored and evaluated at different levels, involving both public and private actors. This will guide the researchers and practitioners who are involved with HIV/AIDS to respond efficiently and in time to control the spread of this deadly disease.
The writer is a Member, Youth Wing, National AIDS Committee, Bangladesh and Technical Assistance Provider, AED, Center on AIDS and Community Health, USA.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments