DHAKA, Dec 1 (AFP) - Thousands of Bangladeshis marched Saturday for World AIDS Day, as activists said the empowerment of women was key to curbing the spread of the disease before it takes a greater toll here.
Several thousand people, mostly students, health workers and members of non-governmental organisations, marched through Dhaka in the annual government-sponsored anti-AIDS march, as walls were plastered with posters urging prevention of HIV.
"It is time to take the overall initiative to combat AIDS in Bangladesh, considering the situation in neighbouring countries," Health Minister Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain said.
While the HIV rate in Bangladesh is still relatively low, India has between 3.5 and five million HIV-positive people, more than any country except South Africa.
According to official figures, 182 Bangladeshis have AIDS, up from 157 a year ago. Independent estimates, however, say as many as 20,000 Bangladeshis have the HIV virus or AIDS.
The World Health Organisation has said that while the number of HIV and AIDS cases among Bangladesh's population of 129 million people was still relatively low, behaviour patterns that could spread the disease were rampant.
Ahmed Farooque of the HIV Programme of Rotary International's Bangladesh chapter said anti-AIDS campaigns were focused on women and young people.
"To deal with an issue like AIDS, empowerment of women is essential in a country where the literacy rate is low," Farooque told AFP.
AIDS activists believe women's empowerment is key in male-dominated societies women where often feel unable to refuse sex, particularly with their husbands, or to ask their partners to use condoms.
The Bangladesh government, with the help of the United Nations Development Programme, is planning to send 55,000 field workers to spread awareness about AIDS around the country.
Officials here have long held that the key to the spread of AIDS has been Bangladeshis who contract the disease abroad and return home. Some 2.67 million Bangladeshis work overseas.
However, doctors have recently indicated that the disease was making other inroads into the country.
Nazrul Islam, a virology department teacher in one of Dhaka's premier hospitals, told the Independent newspaper that five women he recently treated had contracted the disease from husbands who worked abroad but that two others got it from sex in Bangladesh, indicating "the existence of local reserviors of HIV."
"The spread of infection might be faster from now onwards," he said
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