Dhaka, Aug 13: Bangladeshi doctors have detected 188 patients suffering from the HIV virus, which leads to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), the health minister said today. "So far 188 people, including three troopers who went abroad under united nations peace keeping missions, have been detected with the HIV virus, with 19 developing full blown aids," health minister Khandaker Musharraf Hossain told reporters.
Eleven of the 19 have died, he said.
Bangladesh's first HIV cases were reported in the early 1980s.
"The prevalence rate is very low although we have a porous border (with India and Myanmar) and a large number of workers employed abroad," he said. Bangladesh has a 1.5 million expatriate population living mostly in Europe, the Gulf, North America and East Asia.
The minister said awareness programmes were underway and that Bangladesh's "social and Islamic values" had kept the number of AIDS cases low.
Doctors say most Bangladeshis with HIV contacted it while abroad.
The UN estimated that about 13,000 people were HIV positive at the end of 1999, but said that cases were likely to be under reported because of limited voluntary testing and the stigma and fear of being identified as HIV positive. Bureau Report