Clean the cities not HIV

It just continues to amaze me that how much our people give importance to issues that are of little concern. While the real issues remain unaddressed. e.g. How much Ministry of health and other NGOs emphasize and advertise HIV AIDs prevention. Ia HIV a real problem for Pakistan? No one ever analyzed that, they jsut saw that US or India are promoting it.. and so does our NGOs start capmgains and walk against it.

HIV Virus is problem for mainly non-muslim countries where sex becomes just another form of entertainment rather than a responsiblity. Pakistan Alhamdulilah doesn't have that as a big problem. Lets go over the statustucs posted by CIA World Fact book:

• Pakistan approximate population: 176,243,000. Making it 6th most populated country of world.


• 0.1% of population is HIV infected (5000 deaths per year)


• Most infectous diseases: bacterial diarrhea, malaria, hepatitis A and E


• Total overall deaths: 1,350,000 per year


• Percentage of total population living in slum settlements: 74%


• Sanitation provision: 59%

Did the above make any sense? For a disease that causes 5k deaths/year we have rallies. and for diseases that cause around 100k deaths/year we have nothing? A thing to note about the most dangerous diseases is that they are all those that are caused by bad quality of water and sanitation. That is why I showed the sanitation provision value provided by UN Human development report.

What our government, health institutes, NGOs and general public should be working for is a cleaner environment. Our budgets should not be focusing on HIV but on:

• Proper sanitation in non-urban areas. If you check the population influx in hospitals then you will realize that most of the city hospitals are treating people from villages more than city people themselves. Nip the evil in the bud! If proper sanitation is provided in their areas, then medical facilities budget will automatically reduce to cure these common diseases.


• Reduce the garbage cans street time in urban areas. Currently IF there is a garbage can provided in any city area, it remains there.. till its full and flies are flying over it.. and it fills to brim and garbage starts to fall out of it. if the cycle of picking them up is shortened then the garbage throwing areas would be much cleaner and the cans wouldn't become a house of disease themselves.

• Supply of clean drinking water. Purification and disinfection of underground water, and obtaining potable water from evaporation and re-liquidification of rain water. desalination or reverse osmosis of sea water.. all of these can be used to obtain ample water reserves for drinking purpose.


• Regular cleanup of city sewer system and rain water drains. Once they choke up, water stagnates on city streets, it not only deteriorates the roads, but also become bacterial hazard.

Fight for cleanliness! Our Prophet (SAW) announced it as a part of religion; and we can see the effects of it. HIV in Pakistan have been reported in: Commercial sexual workers, drug users, people from abroad and prison inmates. So, why are we giving importance to them rather more than rest of regular public? I am not saying to abandon fight against Aids.. I am just saying that everything should be given consideration as their level of vitality. The NGOs should also stop telling you about illegal sexual relations and first work on creating awareness of clean living and Islamic habits.