Your daily Selection of IRIN Africa PlusNews reports, 3/31/2003

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U N I T E D N A T I O N S

Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

Integrated Regional Information Network

CONTENT:

1 - PAKISTAN: People living with HIV/AIDS thrown out of hospital, says NGO

1 - PAKISTAN: People living with HIV/AIDS thrown out of hospital, says NGO

ISLAMABAD, 31 March (PLUSNEWS) - An NGO working with people living with

HIV/AIDS in Pakistan has expressed outrage after three HIV positive

patients were allegedly thrown out of a hospital in the North West

Frontier Province (NWFP) due to discrimination.

“These patients were thrown out because of discrimination and ignorance of

the disease,” chief executive of the AWARD NGO, Maimoona Masood Khan told

IRIN from Peshawar, the provincial capital of the NWFP on Monday.

She maintained that misconceptions about how the HIV virus is contracted

were responsible for the patients being thrown out. “This kind of behavior

is going to make this issue go underground and if this happens it will

come back as a full blown epidemic.” The killer disease carries huge

social stigma in this deeply Islamic society and very few people are open

about their HIV positive status.

The patients were allegedly ejected from the Khyber hospital over the past

two months, with the most recent case on 20 March.

“One of the patients is 25 years old and his immune system is very low and

is in a very bad state,” she stressed.

The young man and the other two patients, another male and a middle aged

woman, have all been transferred to a private hospital under the care of

AWARD which is covering the cost of their hospitalisation.

Khan has written to the Pakistani health authorities, calling for action

to be taken against hospital staff. “It is a government hospital and the

medical staff should be reprimanded,” Khan lamented, adding that such

cases were common. “Can you imagine how many HIV positive patients could

have been neglected in the past and thrown out and not told that they are

HIV positive because people just don’t know how to deal with it?” she

said.

Relevant Pakistani authorities say the matter is being addressed

seriously. “We have received a letter from the NGO and we are

investigating the matter to find out exactly what happened,” head of

Pakistan’s National Aids Control Programme [NACP], Asma Bokhari told IRIN.

There are an estimated 80,000 HIV positive people out of a population 140

million in Pakistan today. However, official figures are much lower.

Towards the end of last year, 1,942 cases of HIV and 231 of full-blown

AIDS were reported to the NACP.

[ENDS]

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