The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

Although the overall HIV prevalence is low, behaviour patterns and extensive risk factors that facilitate the rapid spread of the infection are widespread, making Bangladesh highly vulnerable to an HIV/AIDS epidemic.

The country's limited voluntary testing and counselling capacity and the stigma and fear of being identified and detected as HIV positive are main obstacles in the country.

Some 2.5 million new infection of HIV virus was recorded in 2007 globally. About 6,800 new infections occur daily, in which 1,200 are children and 90 per cent in the developing countries.

In central Bangladesh, among 93.4 per cent of over 500 injecting drug users, needle sharing is routine. These drug injectors are not an isolated population - they are often married and sometimes sell sex and blood.

Injecting drug use- UNDCP estimates that between 500,000 and one million people in Bangladesh are addicted to drugs.

Bangladesh is vulnerable because proximity to other countries with epidemics, large number of sexually active people, clandestine sex industries, high internal and external mobility, rapid urbanisation, common use of drugs, inadequate health services, poor use of condom and widespread of poverty.

This was disclosed at a workshop on 'Involvement of mass media in HIV/AIDS prevention activities' organised by Nari Maitree of Urban Primary Health Care Project-II (UPHCP) of Project Area 6 under Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) at Meghna Hall of BIAM in the city yesterday.

Col Dr Shawkot Ali, Chief Health Officer of DCC, Md Serajul Haider, Deputy Project Director of UPHCP-II, Abed Khan, Editor of daily Shamokal, Julious Otim, consultant from Uganda, Shaheen Akter Dolly, Executive Director of Nari Maitree, among others, spoke, while Masuda Begum, Project Manager of Nari Maitree, presented key-note paper on the occasion.

In Bangladesh, a large commercial sex industry with roughly 36,000 workers, each seeing an average of 18.8 clients per week for brothel-based sex workers and 44 clients per week for hotel-based workers, the key-note paper said.

Although there are only 14 well-established brothels, two of which were evicted from Narayanganj, all the residential hotels, ranging from high to low classes, in major cities are thriving on sex business, it said.

All river ports, seaports are well known for sex business. Just after evening all the parks in the Dhaka city are considered to be sex units for low class people, 1,70,000 including 8,000 to 10,000 hijras, of generally non-literate sex workers, it added.

Female sex workers have an average of two to five clients a day, making the number of clients about half a million men a day. It is suspected that large numbers of young and mostly single female textile and garment workers may also supplement their low wages by indulging in occasional prostitution, the report disclosed.

Some 60 per cent of long distance truck drivers have sex with commercial sex workers about twice a month without any knowledge of HIV/AIDS. Extra-marital sex appears to exist in rural societies and in particular where husbands are absent for a long period, it added.

Some 30 journalists from different media attended the workshop.