Fight against Aids 'should involve those most at risk'

Cairo: A UAE expert said more study was needed to involve sex workers and drug addicts in the Gulf states in anti-HIV/Aids efforts, after a regional expert warned that drastic action is needed to curtail the rapid rise in the disease.

The regional expert had warned that Arab states need to take drastic action including involving drug addicts and sex workers in anti-HIV/Aids efforts, after the region recorded the second highest jump of new infections globally.

But Dr Nada Al Marzouqi, head of the National HIV/Aids Committee, told Gulf News that more study was needed to see if drug abuse and the sex industry were rampant enough to warrant outreach programmes. "HIV is a problem [but] we need proper studies and proper research. We have to see if drug abuse and sex workers are a problem in the country. Maybe they are a problem in other Arab countries, but not [necessarily] here," she said.

According to the Ministry of Health, intravenous drug use and unprotected sex were the primary modes of transmission for HIV/Aids. In March, the ministry reported there were 508 people living with HIV/Aids in the UAE, although some health experts in the disease estimate actual figures to be much higher.

New HIV infections in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region jumped by 300 per cent between 2002 and 2004, second only to Eastern Europe and Central Asia. An estimated 68,000 people in the region were infected last year, according to the UN.

Arab countries, including the media, need to drastically change their campaigns, said Dr Ehab Al Kharrat, senior programme adviser on HIV/Aids for the UN Development Programme. "Arab states should change from just disseminating information campaigns to wide-scale evidence-based and outreach campaigns," he said, on the sidelines of a conference on HIV/Aids held here recently.

"More work needs to be done to reach sex workers and drug addicts, who will work with other addicts and sex workers. Evidence is accumulating that this approach is successful," he said. However, implementing such programmes required MENA governments to acknowledge the existence of drug abuse and a sex industry in their country, two topics which are taboo in the largely conservative Islamic region.

Dr Al Kharrat said Arab states were at crossroads, requiring them to face facts if they want to prevent an HIV/Aids epidemic that is happening in other parts of the world. "Almost all the Arab states still have a window of opportunity because we have low prevalence of HIV/Aids and we can manage the epidemic package if we start now," he said.