The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

Around one crore and 20 lakh students of secondary and higher secondary schools and college across the country came to know about HIV/AIDS from their text books, according to representatives of Save the Children yesterday revealed.

"It was the first such kind of initiative in Asia to include the topics on HIV/AIDS in text books of class six to class twelve," they said at a view exchange meeting with stakeholders on HIV/AIDS at a hotel in the city.

Save the Children USA organised the meeting which was presided over by Health and Family Welfare Secretary AKM Zafar Ullah Khan.

Economic Relations Division Secretary Md Aminul Islam Bhuiyan was present in the meeting as chief guest. Deputy Country Director of Save the Children USA Margarita Clark, Found Portfolio Manager, Global Fund Christa Arent, Director General of Health Services Prof Dr Md Abul Faiz, Director-HIV/AIDS Programme and South Asia Programme Adviser of Save the Children USA Dr Nizam Uddin Ahmed, Programme Manager of National AIDS/STD Programme Officer Dr Ferdous Alam Shibib and stakeholders of the programme addressed the meeting, among others.

A total of 44,710 teachers of 9,070 schools and colleges were imparted training on HIV/AIDS. Following combined efforts, it was possible to teach the students on the threat of HIV/AIDS," they noted.

Md Aminul Islam Bhuiyan said the Bangladesh has made significant achievement on HIV/AIDS prevention programme through the coordination programmes with the stakeholders. "The medias have played a vital role by telecasting and publishing prevention mechanism on HIV/AIDS. It has created a new dimension of public and private partnership in implementation the HIV/AIDS project in the country," he added.

AKM Zafar Ullah Khan said that the HIV/AIDS project has been implemented successfully foundation has implemented successfully with the financial support of Global Foundation.