Editorial
Combating HIV/AIDS
Thrust should be on awareness and prevention
Eight years after the fatal disease Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was first recognised in the USA, the first case of AIDS was detected in Bangladesh in 1989. So, we cannot say that Bangladesh is quite new to awareness about this disease. And according to the UN's regional office for South Asia on drugs and crimes, the number of people infected with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), the virus that causes AIDS, over the last two decades is only 1745, while 204 of those victims have succumbed to the syndrome until December 2009.
So, considering the spread of the pandemic worldwide among some 60 million people with 25 million deaths as reported by UNAIDS in 2009, it can be said that the prevalence of the disease in Bangladesh is rather at the lower end. But that should, however, not be any reason for complacency. For the UNAIDS country coordinator Dr. Salil Panakadan at a recent roundtable informed that 28 to 30 per cent of the HIV-infected people in the country are aged below 25 years. And since these AIDS victims belong to the younger generation, they are also more susceptible to the infection if only because they are also more attracted towards the liberal lifestyles and hence less attached to the more conservative traditional, social norms and values.
Among those most-at-risk are also the drug addicts, especially those who inject the drug into their bodies and those who are prone to unsafe sex. Female sex workers and their male customers are therefore dangerously exposed to the disease. Blood transfusion is also another source of infection unless the blood is properly screened and the needle is sterilised.
Unfortunately, the adolescent section of the population who are exposed to the risk of contracting HIV lack the necessary level of awareness about danger the disease poses. That is particularly because, the society they are born into has many barriers to the smooth transfer of information on HIV/AIDS to the youngsters. Open discussion on sex is a taboo in the family. So it is also in the schools. As a result, despite the fact that we have introduced education on HIV in the general curriculum at the primary and the higher secondary level, neither teachers, nor students are comfortable with the subject in the classrooms. So, where any discussion on sex and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) like AIDS is an anathema, one can easily understand what may happen to a person who is infected with the disease. For there is the real danger of her or his becoming an instant pariah.
Social conservatism is the main barrier to the programmes aimed to develop mass awareness against HIV/AIDS in the country. And since prevention should be the thrust of the campaign against the disease, the stakeholders including the government, the civil society, the non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) must give the topmost priority on awareness raising programme to fight the pandemic.
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