United Nations: A United Nation report said on Thursday that millions of HIV-affected households in Asia are facing “irreversible poverty” because of the cost of living with the disease, with women and children hardest hit.
According to the report, extra costs faced by HIV-affected households make it harder for parents to pay for their children’s education, with school drop-out rates far higher for such families across the region.
The UN estimates some 34 million people worldwide lived with HIV last year, while improved treatment has meant that the number of AIDS-linked deaths has steadily dropped from a peak of 2.2 million in 2005 to 1.8 million last year.
According to UNAIDS estimates, the number of People Living with HIV & AIDS (PLHA) in Pakistan is 97,400, i.e., approximately one hundred thousand, out of which about half live in Sindh; 80% of them in Karachi. In other words Karachi alone has a population of 40,000 People Living with HIV & AIDS.
One can easily have an idea about the grave and alarming situation of AIDS in Sindh by considering the fact that the prevalence of HIV among Injecting Drug Users (IDUs) increased from 0.4% in January, 2004 to 24% in 2005, and in 2007 it reached up to 30%.
