AIDS project for truckers hits snags

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan Truckers Project, a brainchild of National AIDS Control Programme (NACP), has hit snags due to bureaucratic inertia and naive approach on the part of the Ministry of Health, sources told TheNation on Wednesday.
“The ministry declined to endorse the proposal on the pretext that HIV/AIDS is no longer an issue in Pakistan,” sources added.
Contrary to the ministry’s claim that HIV/AIDS is not an issue in the country, the sources told TheNation that more than hundred HIV/AIDS positive cases were discovered only last year in Jalalpur Jattan near Gujrat.
Moreover, the source said that it was also on the record that 15 per cent of injecting drug users were carrying the deadly epidemic.
After sex workers and injecting drugs users, truck drivers are considered as most vulnerable to HIV and AIDS.
Therefore, the project was aimed at reducing the behavioural and biological risks of HIV transmission among Pakistan’s long distance drivers, cleaners, attendants and associated populations involved in trucking business.
According to the sources, if the Ministry does not consider the HIV/AIDS an issue in Pakistan so there is no need to continue such project anymore as it was wastage of time and money.
All the high-ups of the ministry concerned were contacted by the Family Health International but all in vain as no one properly responded to them.
The programme was funded by World Bank and the National AIDS Control Programme (NACP) was the focal executing agency. NACP contracted Family Health International (FHI) to implement a package of services, “HIV/AIDS Service Package for Long Distance Truckers, Cleaners/Attendants and Associated Populations” in nine major cities, including Torkham, Peshawar, Taxila, Gujranwala, Lahore, DG Khan, Sukkur, Karachi and Quetta for three years.
FHI further hired nine different NGOs to implement the project in the above mentioned nine cities.
The Hamrahi Marakiz established across the nine sites in accordance with the project remained functional as a network providing facilities, including clinical services for primary healthcare (PHC), Sexually Transmitted Infections clinical management, HIV voluntary counselling and testing (VCT), client education, as well as laboratory services for HIV and syphilis testing (Karachi site provided on site testing whereas all the other sites had developed linkages with public and private testing facilities in their respective cities).