241 Views Posted on 27-Jul-2010 under Health

A World Bank report released Wednesday at AIDS 2010 has noted the growing prevalence of HIV/AIDS among sex workers as well as other high risk groups in South Asia, the Times of India reports.
"Despite prevention and other efforts to reduce high-risk behaviours such as unprotected sex, buying and selling of sex, and injecting drug use, HIV vulnerability and risk remain high, says the report by a team from the International Centre for Research on Women and the World Bank," the newspaper.
"Stigmatizing attitudes in the general population and discriminatory treatment
by health providers and local officials, among others, intensify the marginalization of vulnerable groups at highest risk, driving them further from the reach of health services and desperately needed prevention, treatment, care, and support services. Daily harassment and abuse also cause health problems and affect mental health, thereby leading to depression, social isolation, and an array of adverse socioeconomic outcomes related to HIV," according to a World Bank press release (7/21). The Times of India details how World Bank grants totaling $1.4 million split between 26 programs in six countries helped to foster new ideas about how to decrease HIV stigma and discrimination.
Growing concerns among HIV/AIDS leaders about how the criminalization of sex workers and injection drug users (IDUs) impacts efforts to contain the virus in Asia were also a leading topic of conversation at AIDS 2010 Wednesday, Agence France-Presse reports.
While injection drug use is recognized as a leading cause of HIV/AIDS transmission, "[t]wenty-five countries in the Asia-Pacific region still impose the death penalty for offences related to the possession and abuse of drugs,
creating a huge stigma that means abusers often avoid treatment for fear of imprisonment, said Anand Grover, a lawyer and special rapporteur for the U.N. Human Rights Council," according to the news service.
"In some countries, 'drug users still have to go to jail before they actually can access harm reduction services', said Rachel Ong, of the Asia Pacific Network of People Living with HIV (APN+) Ong meanwhile criticised that Asian governments lacked visibility in the fight against HIV/AIDS, compared to the richer nations, which donate much of the aid to fighting the disease." She also called upon the region to increase its commitment to human rights.