New initiative for HIV/AIDS communication strategy suggested

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Despite a still low HIV prevalence, various risk factors, including low level of knowledge and low condom use, are posing increasing threat of HIV/AIDS in the country for lack of proper communication strategy, reports UNB.
Since the HIV/AIDS was first detected in Bangladesh in 1989, a total of 874 cases of HIV positive were reported and 240 cases of AIDS confirmed in 2006.
Since then some 109 people have died of the deadly disease in the country. According to an UNAIDS estimate, there are some 13,000 HIV-positive people in the country.
Although overall HIV prevalence is low, Bangladesh is still considered a high-risk country for several reasons. These are presence of covert multi-partner sexual activity, low level of knowledge and low condom use, unsafe professional blood donation, high incidence of self-reported sexually transmitted infections among vulnerable groups and return of expatriates who work in different countries.
The country's vulnerability is very high compared to other parts of South Asia and infection rates within the vulnerable groups are increasing, leading to an ever-greater possibility that the virus will spread to the general population, says a study.
National HIV surveillance indicates that the rate of HIV infection among street-based sex workers in central Bangladesh is high compared with sex workers in other parts of South Asia. High level of HIV/AIDS in neighbouring India and Myanmar pose a serious threat of HIV/AIDS in the country.
According to India's National AIDS Control Organization (NACO), there was an estimated 2.5 million people with HIV positive in India in 2006.
The UNAIDS 2006 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic put the number of people living with HIV/AIDS in Myanmar at 360,000 by the end of 2005.
Adolescent and youth are more vulnerable to HIV/AIDS in Bangladesh as another study showed that 50 per cent young people are at risk.
A report of World Health Organization (WHO) said Bangladesh is still considered a low HIV/AIDS prevalent country, but it is at a critical juncture in the course of its AIDS epidemic.
Awareness level with knowledge of correct ways to avoid HIV/AIDS among the general people in Bangladesh is quite low. Among the men with age 15-54, 18 per cent never heard of HIV/AIDS, 24 per cent heard of it but do not know correct ways to avoid it and only 58 per cent knows one or more correct ways to avoid the disease, says 'Bangladesh Demography and Health Survey 2003-04'.
The government with the collaboration of national and international NGOs has been trying to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic through various logistic supports and communication strategies since the disease was first detected in the country, but any remarkable success is yet to be found, according to experts.
Former chairman of Mass Communication Department of Rajshahi University Dulal Chandra Biswas told the news agency that Bangladesh could not yet achieve any appreciable success in combating HIV/AIDS for lack of proper communication strategy.