The 2010 UNAIDS Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic acknowledges these achievements and lauds Nepal’s efforts in reducing the rate of fresh infections. Nepal is one of at least 33 countries that have achieved significant decline in the rate of new HIV infections. Nepal also has an encouraging scorecard on some key indicators such as an increase in condom use, a jump in the number of people accessing anti-retroviral medication, and a greater overall awareness among the population about HIV and AIDS.
Good Progress? Yes, certainly. Is that enough? Of course not. That´s why we want to caution against any complacency in fighting the HIV epidemic. There are 16,000 positively tested persons in the country, and there are another 48,000 infected people, but the latter are yet to be tested. Moreover, around 16,800 housewives, considered at low risk, and 15,700 low-risk men are suspected to be HIV positive. Since these untested people do not know whether or not they are infected, they might be transmitting the disease to others unknowingly. One of the immediate challenges is how to get them tested.
If Nepal is to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goal target of bringing the number of new infections down to zero by 2015, all the stakeholders should pull up their socks and work in a highly coordinated manner. One of the main challenges is to get people tested for HIV voluntarily. Due to social stigma associated with AIDS, many people hesitate to go for a test. One way to approach this problem is to persuade big organizations and industries with a huge number of employees to undergo mass testing. Similarly, colleges with their adult students can also be targeted for such mass testing. There are occasional complaints about lack of resources to launch an effective and coordinated anti-AIDS drive in the country. We want to draw the attention of the government and of donors that this is too important a fight to be given up on the pretext of inadequate resources.
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