Speakers at a meeting on Wednesday underscored the need for engagement of vulnerable communities in the process of combating HIV virus infection in the country.
They also suggested creating awareness about the disease among the people properly.
Community Forum of Bangladesh, a platform of KAP-(Key Affected People in regards to HIV/AIDS) organised the consultation meeting entitled ‘Connecting the Dots for Inclusive Development’ to celebrate ‘World AIDS Day 2020’ as a part of 16 days of Activism.
The seminar presented a power point that showed HIV prevalence which remains less than 0.01 per cent amongst general population. The deadly virus prevalence remains about 3.9 per cent amongst the key population mostly in People Inject With Drug (PWID) in the country.
Estimated number of people living with HIV is 14,000 at present in Bangladesh. A total of 141 people died of HIV virus in 2020.
Around 658 people have been infected with HIV virus in 2020, of which 124 Rohingya people, the presentation also showed.
Among the HIV infected persons, 33 per cent are from general people, 19 per cent from Rohingya and 15 per cent from migrant workers.
Referring to the UNAIDS data, the presentation showed that modeling on CIVID-19 pandemic’s long term impact on the HIV response shows that an estimated 123000 to 293000 additional HIV infections and 69000 to 148000 additional AIDs related deaths will occur globally.
An estimated 26 million people were on HIV treatment as of mid-June this year, up only by 2.4 per cent from the end 2019 estimate of 25.4 million people. By comparison, treatment coverage increased by 4.8 per cent between January and June of 2019.
The community forum is formed with the people who are more vulnerable to HIV AIDS which includes—Transgender, female sex workers (FSW), people inject with drug (PWID), people lives with HIV (PLHIV), male having sex with male (MSM), migrant workers and youth.
Every year ‘World AIDS Day’ is observed on December 01. Government officials, experts and NGOs representatives, among others were present at the programme in the city.
