Speakers at the workshop on " Mainstreaming of the IDUs and HIV-Role of the Media" said media reports can sensitise the law enforcement agencies to be sympathetic enough to send the IDUs to the treatment centers instead of custody.

South-South Center Bangladesh organised the workshop for the journalists at the Spectra Convention Center in Gulshan yesterday.

The HIV prevalence rate among the IDUs is 4 percent, while in some particular areas of Dhaka including Chankharpul, Shaheed Minar and Dhaka Medical College Hospital area, it is 8.9 percent, almost four percent higher than the epidemic level of five percent, according to the fifth-round serological surveillance study of the government that was presented at the workshop.

The risk behaviours among the vulnerable drug users include 57 percent of them with female sex partners, 10 percent of the IDUs having sex with men including male sex workers, multiple sex partners, anal sex practice, law rate of condom use, common needle sharing, selling of bloods and high rate of injecting drugs, the report says.

Apart from the highly vulnerable IDUs, the other most vulnerable groups to HIV/Aids are heroin takers, street-hotel and brothel based sex workers, hijras, male sex workers, babies in the brothels and clients of sex workers, truckers, rickshaw-pullers and water transport workers.

According to the latest serological surveillance report 2004, there are 465 HIV positives in the country. The number was 363 in 2003.

Information Secretary Dr Mohammad Mahbubur Rahman attended the workshop as chief guest.

Vaidyanathan K, HIV/Aids Coordinator of CARE Bangladesh presented a paper on HIV/Aids scenario in Bangladesh and global context.

Law Commission member and former IGP Dr M Enamul Huq moderated the session where South-South Center Director Jalaluddin Ahmed, CARE Bangladesh Regional Coordinator of HIV programme Dr Munir Ahmed, Bangladesh Manobadhikar Sangbadik Forum Executive Director Khairuzzaman Kamal and journalists from different news media attended the event.