Government health departments, NGOs observe World Aids Day in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Federal and provincial health departments and NGOs are organising health seminars and awareness walks today all over the country in connection with World Aids Day. The day observed every year on December 1 is aimed at highlighting the negative fallout of the deadly disease and create awareness among masses to observe safety measures from falling prey to it. In Karachi, Sindh AIDS Control Program (SACP) has scheduled to arrange a HIV AIDS awareness walk on at SeaView beach Clifton Karachi. The walk will begin from Mc Donald Sea View led by SACP s Program Manager Dr Younis Chachar. Officials of health departments, representatives of civil society, NGOs, students, business community and patients of the HIV AIDS will participate in the awareness walk. Coordinator Sindh AIDS Control Program Dr Sikandar Iqbal said the walk would be held with aim to create awareness in general public An estimated 130 000 HIV AIDS infected people are living in Pakistan out of which 56 000 are in Sindh province The SACP had registered 12 979 cases across the province since 1995 out of which 12 740 were HIV positive and 239 were AIDS patients. The major high risk groups of HIV AIDS prevalence are include long distance truck drivers, female *** workers, transgender, drug users, jail inmates, children born to infected parent, street children and victims of unsafe medical procedures. Meanwhile, Punjab Chief Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif said that World AIDS Day is observed to raise awareness among the public about prevention from AIDS so that they could remain safe from this disease and live a better and healthy life. In his message on World AIDS Day, the Chief Minister stressed the need for an effective awareness campaign to sensitize the people about safety from this disease. Adoption of precautionary measures were essential to remain safe from this fatal disease, he said and added that positive attitudes should be adopted for living a healthy life and all possible precautionary measures should be adopted because it was the best way to remain safe from this fatal disease. Sustained efforts were needed to educate the people about AIDS, he added. The chief minister said that effective measures had been adopted for prevention from AIDS and the Punjab government had provided the facility of free medicines and tests to the patients under the AIDS Control Programme. Along with it, blood screening had been made compulsory to ensure safe blood transfusion in the province, he added. He said: "today, we should reiterate our commitment that an organized awareness campaign will be launched to aware the people about the precautionary measures needed for saving them from this diseases.