World AIDS Day 2005
"Stop AIDS: Keep the Promise"
1st December, 2005

Bangladesh is the eighth most populous country in the world with a population of about 124 million. Rapid urbanization and industrialization together has increased scope of mobility within the country and job opportunity outside the country as well.

Being one of the least developed and highly populated countries, Bangladesh is under the compounding threat of HIV/AIDS epidemic. It is situated in the middle of a hot spot, the Asian epicenter, and at crossroads of South-Asian migration and mobility. To allow an AIDS epidemic in Bangladesh would put the country in a more disadvantaged position. It is already strained with problems of overpopulation, lack of resources, poverty and natural disasters. During the past two decades, the urban population has grown from six million in 1974 to 21 million in 1994, and it is expected to grow to 50 million by 2014. About two million migrant workers live in Middle East and South East Asian countries.

In the AIDS arena in Bangladesh, information and education programs are under way, but other interventions on HIV/AIDS are yet to develop significantly. This is largely due to lack of training and information sharing in the country. So far, limited initiatives have been taken by the Government to address the issues.

Bangladesh is considered as a "situation of Low Prevalence and High Risk". The social and cultural environment is not favorable for the people, who have already been identified as infected or affected from HIV/AIDS.

Denial, stigma, fear, discrimination and violence of human rights increase the invisibility of the PLWHA in the society.

The invisibility of a large number of HIV infected people has further complicated the situation. It is still unknown how many people are living with HIV/AIDS in Bangladesh On the other hand, studies conducted in 1989-1997 suggest that we have a high prevalence of STIs. One investigation said "the estimated number of STIs in the country was 2.3 million".

There are people in the government and even in NGOs, who believe that as our people strictly observe cultural values so HIV infection would not spread. However, many people believe that all the factors for a rapid outbreak exist in the country. These include:

? high prevalence of STIs,

? common border with neighboring countries,

? wide unsafe practice in blood transfusion,

? low prevalence rate of condom use, and

? insufficient awareness and knowledge about HIV/AIDS

Because of these factors a vast number of populations in Bangladesh remain exposed to HIV infection

In the backdrop of this situation a two-day National AIDS Conference, first of its kind was planned by the National STD/AIDS Network, Bangladesh. The AIDS Conference was organized mainly to share HIV/AIDS related information and experiences, develop working relationship between different agencies to foster collaboration, and an effective Network and identify the needs of NGOs and CBOs working on HIV/AIDS in Bangladesh.

One of the main programs of the Conference was to assist the grassroots NGOs and CBOs in building their capacity for sharing experiences before a national level gathering of experts and activists. To achieve this object of the Conference, three skill building worhops were organized in Dhaka, Chittagong and Khulna during March and April 2002.

The Conference was attended by 388 registered participants including Individuals, NGOs, CBOs, and Government Officials, National and International Donor Agencies and UN system in Bangladesh. On the other hand, there was only one regional participation from Malaysia.

Irene Fernandez, a well known human rights activists who was put behind the bar by the government of Malaysia for her support to Bangladeshi migrant workers, presented her paper on the regional aspects of HIV/AIDS and asked for building and strengthening national and regional networking in South Asia to address the growing threats of the HIV/AIDS infections and its impact on the social, cultural and economic development in the region. She is the Chairperson of CARAM Asia and Director of International Council of AIDS Service Organizations.

The other two papers were read by Dr. Saleem of National STD/AIDS Program and Ismat Bhuiya of Population Council. The two papers dealt with the responses to the epidemic by the government and NGO's. The other prominent speaker in the plenary was Dr. Zafarullah Chowdhury, who emphasised on more utilization of local resources and experiences and less dependency on foreign resources, ideas and experiences in dealing with the challenges of HIV/AIDS in Bangladesh.

The two-day conference ended with Dhaka Declaration that calls for a "broad based functional partnership between Government agencies, Networks/Forums, NGOs, professional bodies and private sector organizations in developing and implementing all the programs related to HIV and AIDS in Bangladesh, where the government would provide the leadership in creating an enabling condition for the partner organizations in implementing their programs".

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