SACP reluctant to share Ratodero’s HIV cases

LARKANA:Sindh AIDS Control Programme (SACP) has failed to share HIV positive children’s data of Ratodero region since 2nd June 2020.

Despite several messages and telephone calls, statistics of HIV-infected children and adults are not being shared with the journalists who attended training workshops organized in collaboration with UNAIDS Pakistan at Karachi, Larkana and Ratodero.

The organizers had created a separate WhatsApp group to share HIV data on regular basis and other relevant updates on this viral disease under the name of “Sindh Media Alliance HIV” in which 60 people were included along with SACP Provincial Program Manager (PPM), UNAIDS and UNICEF officials.

So far 46 HIV positive people have expired in and around Ratodero out of whom 42 are children and four are adults. It was revealed by Dr Imran Arbani while talking to this scribe on Tuesday. He also sent a list of those patients who had lost their precious lives to HIV. He said a six-year-old child of Brohi community, a resident of village Mothoo Brohi, expired on 8th August at 11 am.

He said till 2nd June, as many as 1,392 HIV positive cases were detected at the Screening Camp of Ratodero out of which 335 were adults and 1,157 children. Dr Arbani said out of total adults, 101 were males and 234 females and out of total children 645 were males and 412 girls.

He said it was really alarming to note that the government was not sharing HIV positive people’s statistics since more than two months which showed that they were hiding the facts and ground realities as they had practically done nothing for the affected poverty-ridden families. He said even the endowment fund of Rs1 billion announced by PPP Chairman and Sindh Chief Minister had not yet been released despite passage of over one-year which he described pathetic.

When Dr Tegh Bahadur, Incharge, HIV Centre, Ratodero, was contacted he said screening data was directly sent to SACP and not even shared with him. Dr Saqib Ali Shaikh, former PPM SACP, was contacted but he neither attended calls nor responded to SMS.