LAHORE: Approximately, 869 people have been reported as carriers of AIDS in four districts of Sargodha division during the last 10 years, seeking the government’s attention towards this area.
In Kot Imrana village of Sargodha, illegal doctor Allah Ditta, alias Haji, would use used syringes on multiple patients in the village leaving 37 infected with the disease in Kot Imrana and other surrounding villages.
Earlier, 21 people from village Kot Imrana were registered with the centre of AIDS. In October last year, a centre team got samples of over 300 villagers out of which 16 people were tested positive for AIDS. Now more than 250 people of Kot Imrana have been tested positive for AIDS in the last one and a half years.
The main cause of the disease are 5,000 quacks who are still working in Sargodha and using syringes on multiple patients while barbers use a single razor on more than one customer. Unless these quacks, barbers and dentists are arrested in all parts of the division, the number of the carriers would continue to increase. The government should provide proper counselling about the disease and motivate people to get their blood tests done.
Dua Qasim
Published in The Express Tribune, December 25th, 2018.
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Original news : https://tribune.com.pk/story/1873926/6-aids-epidemic/