What the official report said is that poorly run HIV/AIDS programs are main cause of the rise of the dreaded diseases; which is declining globally. In fact more sex workers, drug addicts and other people used to live in unhygienic condition and exposed to unsafe sex are falling to infections because of failure of concerned agencies to get the awareness counsel and medicare services to the highly vulnerable section in the society.
Experts are highly concerned about this rising rate of HIV infection although there are many government programs at work in namesake but not reaching the target groups. We must say utter mismanagement of such programmes and lack of proper monitoring at field levels are mainly responsible for failure of the AIDS/HIV prevention activities. The government has allocations but vested interest groups in the government and outside are exploiting the fund by all corrupt means and grabbing most of the money. In our view the Health Ministry should strengthen its monitoring programs to make sure that health agents are reaching the services to affected people and making vulnerable ones aware of the risk by running growing public awareness programmes.
Report said this year death rate from AIDS exceeds all records of previous years as its number stands more than 100 so far. Both the infection and death rate caused by AIDS is very frightening. The experts fear AIDS situation may become epidemic if the trend continues. Ironically, the government is downplaying the actual AIDS cases disclosing only some AIDS infected patients cases to the international community and taking credit from it. But in reality, the actual figure would be far higher than the reported one.
As we know most people don’t want to be identified with AIDS/HIV cases for social stigma and discrimination. Young people try to avoid AIDS/HIV test. So, it is impossible to get the exact HIV status in Bangladesh. But the report we have got is already alarming. In this situation, government should increase AIDS/HIV programs and strengthen existing ones to alert people against the deadly disease. Media campaign, in this context, may be significant weapon while government and non-government organizations may also use religious teaching and social values to refrain people from engaging in illegal and unsafe sexual contacts. Because affected people spread the infection.
