HIV / AIDS reaches epidemic level in Pakistan City – News

The worsening of HIV / AIDS cases in Shahkot, a city in Pakistan's Punjab district, has reached the point of becoming an epidemic, a police agency said.

In its report sent to Punjab Chief Minister Sardar Usman Buzdar, the agency revealed that the number of HIV / AIDS cases reached 140 in Shahkot after 85 more people were tested positive for the virus this year, Dawn newspaper reported Thursday.

"A survey of the agency's field staff revealed that the HIV virus (AIDS) was spreading rapidly in Shahkot district Nankana Sahib," reads the report.

Of the 140 cases reported in the city of about 200,000 people, 54 were reported from September 1 to December 31, 2018, while 85 new people were found positive for the virus from January 1 to July 27 of this year.

The report also revealed that 56 women and a seven-year-old child were among those infected.

He said 399 people were screened after district health officials held a camp on July 24 to assess the health status of Shahkot residents. Among them, 11, including seven women, were tested positive.

"The spread of HIV is caused by the use of narcotics, brothels, immoral activities of transgender people, by the use of unsterilized material by health practitioners – including quacks – and by the use of razors contaminated by barbers, "says the report.

In a report published in July by the World Health Organization (WHO), Pakistan was one of the countries in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region where new HIV infections have risen to an alarming level since 1987.

The current HIV epidemic in Pakistan is defined as a concentrated epidemic, says the report.

Although overall prevalence remains below 1% in the adult population, the latest estimate (2017) of the number of people living with HIV was 150,000.22 In 2018, 21,000 new cases were recorded.

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