Checking the spread of AIDS in Pakistan
In Pakistan, you could probably live for years and never meet anyone with HIV/AIDS. Yet the fact that the virus is not often in the public eye does not mean that HIV/AIDS is not a problem in Pakistan. It is known to infect tens of thousands of Pakistanis, a figure that is certainly a gross underestimate due to both sexual taboos surrounding the disease and the often low social status of many of its victims. And while HIV/AIDS does not attract the kind of notice it once did in the developed world, in Pakistan the scourge has only recently been given more attention.
HIV/AIDS is believed to have been introduced to Pakistan by migrant workers returning from the Middle East. These workers, who went to the Gulf states on work permits, would frequently engage in risky behavior while abroad. Workers, however, needed medical screening in order to renew their work permits, and if one tested HIV-positive during screening, he was sent packing on the first flight back home — in most cases without even being informed of his HIV status. The first confirmed cases of HIV/AIDS were discovered in Pakistan in 1987. At that time, the public perception was that HIV/AIDS would not become endemic in Pakistan because of the country’s strict religious and cultural norms. By 1999, three-fourths of HIV infections occurred among migrant workers returning from Arab Gulf states. In the late 1990s, however, cases of HIV/AIDS began to steadily increase among Pakistani sex workers, prison inmates, truck drivers (who frequently employ the services of prostitutes), and, especially, injecting drug users (IDUs)…