Red tape stalls HIV project

As the international community observes World AIDS Day today, sources said bureaucratic tangles have stalled the HIV/AIDS Targeted Intervention (HATI) project in Bangladesh for the last 11 months.
Sex workers and drug addicts in Bangladesh remain highly vulnerable to HIV infection.
For the last eleven months, bureaucratic tangles have stalled the HIV/AIDS Targeted Intervention (HATI) project.
An estimated Tk 10 crore worth of contraceptives and medicines are gathering dust in NGO inventories rather than being distributed to the 169,000 sex workers and drug injecting users in Bangladesh.
The HATI project was introduced by the health department in 2004, and 40 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were assigned to distribute anti-HIV/AIDS supplies.
Virologist and former vice chancellor of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU) said that the HATI project has done much to alleviate the suffering caused by HIV/AIDS.
However for almost a year, NGOs have had difficulty distributing medicines and contraceptives due to a lack of decision-making on the part of the government.
Since June, services have reportedly stopped altogether.
Nazrul Islam said, "The achievements of the last five years can be wiped out if the programme is halted for even a few days."
The Programme Manager of the National AIDS and STD Programme (NASP) Abdur Rahman acknowledged that delays have occurred and said that the operational plan needs revising.
Abdur Rahman added that once the programme receives clearance from the World Bank it will restart within a month, though under a new name.
NGO sources said that they have written to NASP at least five times asking for an improvement in logistics, but their requests have not been taken up by the authorities.
The NGO VARD, which provides health care to sex workers in approximately 1800 hotels and residences, now has 10 lakh condoms and medicines worth one lakh taka sitting idle in storage.
"It is very unfortunate that a huge number of high risk people are not getting any services and the medicines are going to waste," said Belayet Hossain Mia, assistant director of VARD.
The Population Services and Training Centre of Bangladesh (PSTC), which works with approximately 3,800 brothel-based sex workers, reported that condoms and medicines worth more than Tk 50 lakh are not being distributed from their drop-in centres.
A spokesperson from PSTC said that the expiration date on medicines worth Tk 3 lakh has passed.
A spokesperson from NASP claimed that some services remain active as part of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) programme.
However only eight drop-in centres out of a total of 148 fall within the GFATM grant programme.