ACW partner highlight: Bangladesh AIDS Information and Dissemination Services
BAIDS, is a network of five major civil society organizations working on HIV/AIDS, which includes CCD (Centre for Communication and Development), Communication for AIDS Prevention project (CAP), Anti-AIDS Journalist Alliance (AJA), Bangladesh Anti-AIDS Students' Alliance (BASA) and CARE Bangladesh.
Bangladesh, with a population of 136 million, had about 13,000 adults and children living with HIV infection at the end 2002, according to UNAIDS estimates. However, only 248 HIV cases have actually been reported.
Significant underreporting of cases occurs because of the country's limited voluntary testing and counseling capacity and the social stigma, which leads to the fear of being identified and detected as HIV positive.
The HIV-prevalence rate among adults between the ages of 15 and 49 is still relatively low, at 0.1 percent of the population. As expected, rates are higher in specific groups, such as injecting drug users who have left treatment (1.7 percent) and commercial sex workers (0.5 percent), according to a national behavioral and serological surveillance undertaken in 2001.
BAIDS programme was initiated with the main objective to provide up-to-date HIV/AIDS related information to inform communication media, journalists, researchers and organizations.
Executive Director Golam Mourtoza says that "At the beginning of this project a separate cell at the CCD office was established which was called Bangladesh AIDS Information and Documentation Service (BAIDS).
This type of center was first of its kind in Bangladesh. BAIDS worked at the same time as HIV/AIDS related news agency and as a resource center.
Its task as news agency was to provide factual reports, features, articles, news items, views etc reports of all the activities of this project as well as various activities of HIV/AIDS program of CARE Bangladesh. Through e-mail and fax these were sent to all the news media, journalists at local and national level, national and international agencies in the country.
In a similar way it provided photograph-library, reports, features, articles, news items and views about agencies working in Bangladesh as well as abroad to combat the deadly disease, their success, experience insights & gain".
BAIDS is also a partner organization of the AIDS-CARE-WATCH campaign and believes that it is vitally important to raise awareness about comprehensive care and support options locally available to people living with HIV in Bangladesh.
For more information please contact: www.baids.org Or write to:
Bangladesh AIDS Information and Dissemination Services (BAIDS), Center for Communication and Development (CCD), Dream Paradise House, Monnafer Morh, Raninagar, Rajshahi-6204, Bangladesh.
Telephone +880-721-751001
Fax +880-721-751001
Hotline +880-11-091441
Email: info@baids.org or ccd@ccdbd.org
Website: www.baids.org
Bangladesh, with a population of 136 million, had about 13,000 adults and children living with HIV infection at the end 2002, according to UNAIDS estimates. However, only 248 HIV cases have actually been reported.
Significant underreporting of cases occurs because of the country's limited voluntary testing and counseling capacity and the social stigma, which leads to the fear of being identified and detected as HIV positive.
The HIV-prevalence rate among adults between the ages of 15 and 49 is still relatively low, at 0.1 percent of the population. As expected, rates are higher in specific groups, such as injecting drug users who have left treatment (1.7 percent) and commercial sex workers (0.5 percent), according to a national behavioral and serological surveillance undertaken in 2001.
BAIDS programme was initiated with the main objective to provide up-to-date HIV/AIDS related information to inform communication media, journalists, researchers and organizations.
Executive Director Golam Mourtoza says that "At the beginning of this project a separate cell at the CCD office was established which was called Bangladesh AIDS Information and Documentation Service (BAIDS).
This type of center was first of its kind in Bangladesh. BAIDS worked at the same time as HIV/AIDS related news agency and as a resource center.
Its task as news agency was to provide factual reports, features, articles, news items, views etc reports of all the activities of this project as well as various activities of HIV/AIDS program of CARE Bangladesh. Through e-mail and fax these were sent to all the news media, journalists at local and national level, national and international agencies in the country.
In a similar way it provided photograph-library, reports, features, articles, news items and views about agencies working in Bangladesh as well as abroad to combat the deadly disease, their success, experience insights & gain".
BAIDS is also a partner organization of the AIDS-CARE-WATCH campaign and believes that it is vitally important to raise awareness about comprehensive care and support options locally available to people living with HIV in Bangladesh.
For more information please contact: www.baids.org Or write to:
Bangladesh AIDS Information and Dissemination Services (BAIDS), Center for Communication and Development (CCD), Dream Paradise House, Monnafer Morh, Raninagar, Rajshahi-6204, Bangladesh.
Telephone +880-721-751001
Fax +880-721-751001
Hotline +880-11-091441
Email: info@baids.org or ccd@ccdbd.org
Website: www.baids.org
posted by AIDS-Care-Watch at 2:18 pm
1 Comments:
Facing the Challenges of HIV/AIDS
Around the world, more than 47 million people are now infected with the HIV/AIDS, It is now a weapon of mankind destruction. It has killed more than 30 million people worldwide according to UNAID and WHO reports since the 1st of December 1981 when it was first recognized. This makes it the worst recorded pandemic in the history of pandemics against mankind. In 2006 alone, it was reported to have killed between 2.5 to 3.5 million people with more than 380000 as children. The large number of these people killed is from the sub Saharan Africa. In some Sub-Saharan African countries, HIV/AIDS is expected to lower life expectancy by as much as 25 years.
AIDS is no longer a problem of medication. It is a problem of development. It is not just an individual hardship. It also threatens to decimate the future prospects of poor countries, wiping away years of hard-won improvements in development indicators. As a result of the disease, many poor countries are witnessing a worsening in child survival rates, reduced life expectancy, crumbling and over-burdened health care systems, the breakdown of family structures and the decimation of a generation in the prime of their working lives.
Bangladesh's socio-economic status, traditional social ills, cultural myths on sex and sexuality and a huge population of marginalised people make it extremely vulnerable to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Everyone buying sex in Bangladesh is having unprotected sex some of the time, and a large majority don’t use condoms most of the time. Behaviors that bring the highest risk of infection in Bangladesh are unprotected sex between sex workers and their clients, needle sharing and unprotected sex between men.
Though the country overall has a low prevalence rate, it has reported concentrated epidemics among vulnerable population such as IDUs. There are already localized epidemics within vulnerable groups in, and the virus would spread among the IDUs’ family or sexual partner.
In many poor countries, commercial female sex workers are frequently exposed to HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs/STDs). Where sex workers have poor access to health care and HIV prevention services, HIV prevalence can be as high as 50-90%. Evidence shows that targeted prevention interventions in sex work settings can turn the pandemic around.
Bangladesh is a high prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases, particularly among commercial sex workers; there are available injection drug users and sex workers all over the country, low condom use in the general population. Considering the high prevalence of HIV risk factors among the Bangladeshi population, HIV prevention research is particularly important for Bangladesh. It is very awful, several organization in Bangladesh are working only to prevent HIV/AIDS but few of them like as ‘Rainbow Nari O Shishu Kallyan Foundation’ try to develop proper strategic plane, so should increase research based organization recently.
Poverty in Bangladesh is a deeply entrenched and complex phenomenon. Sequentially, the HIV/AIDS epidemic amplifies and become deeper poverty by its serious economic impact on individuals, households and different sectors of the economy. Poverty is the reason why messages of prevention and control do not make an impact on a vast majority of the vulnerable population.
Sources: World Bank, UNAIDS, UNICEF.
Kh. Zahir Hossain
M & E Specialist (BWSPP)
The World Bank
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Zahir.hossain@gmail.com
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