Afghanistan fights a new, hidden enemy — HIV

Cloistered by two decades of war and then the strict Islamic rule of the Taliban, Afghanistan was long shielded from the ravages of the AIDS pandemic.

Cloistered by two decades of war and then the strict Islamic rule of the Taliban, Afghanistan was long shielded from the ravages of the AIDS pandemic. Not anymore. HIV and AIDS have quietly arrived in this land of thousand calamities. It remains almost completely underground, shrouded in ignorance and stigma as the government struggles with the help of American and NATO forces to rebuild the country in the face of a new offensive by Taliban insurgents.

The few surveys that exist suggest that Afghanistan has a low prevalence of HIV—only 69 recorded cases, and just three deaths. Yet health officials warn that the incidence is certainly much higher. “That figure is absolutely unreliable, even dangerous,” said Nilufar Egamberdi, a World Bank consultant on HIV/AIDS. The WHO feels that 1,000 to 2,000 Afghans are infected, but Egamberdi said even that was “not even close to reality”. Dr Saifur Rehman, director of the National AIDS Control programme in the Ministry of Health, agreed.

International and Afghan health experts warn that Afghanistan faces the additional vulnerabilities of countries emerging from conflict—lack of educational and governmental services, mass movements of people and a sudden influx of aid money, commerce and outsiders.

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Geography and migration make Afghanistan particularly susceptible. It is surrounded by countries with the fastest-growing incidence of AIDS in the world—Russia, China and India. Other neighbours, Pakistan and Iran, have high levels of drug addiction and a growing number of HIV infections, as does Central Asia to the north. Rates of drug addiction are rising in Afghanistan, with its booming opium trade.

“In Afghanistan, all the traditional risk factors for rapid spread of HIV exist concurrently,” according to Dr. Fred Hartman of Management Sciences for Health, a Boston-based group working in Afghanistan.

US convoy attacked

KABUL: A suicide car bomber rammed his car next to a US Embassy convoy on Monday, killing an Afghan teenager and wounding five embassy security personnel on a notoriously dangerous stretch of road. The two other US vehicles were also damaged, and flames shot through the wreckage of the suicide car bomb. Five US Embassy security personnel were injured, one seriously. The US ambassador, Ronald Neumann, was not in the convoy, the embassy spokesman said.

Meanwhile, Daniele Mastrogiacomo, a reporter for the Italian daily La Repubblica, was released by the Taliban after two weeks in captivity in Helmand province. Italian Premier Romano Prodi said securing Mastrogiacomo’s release “was not simple” and that more details would be released later.

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Also, according to a survey released on Monday by the independent Integrity Watch Afghanistan, about 60 per cent of Afghans said the current administration is more corrupt than any other in the past two decades.

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