InterPress News Service (IPS); Thursday, 2 October 1997.
Ahmad Mardini

In a new initiative aimed at preventing the disease from becoming a major health problem, the Bahrain-based Arabian Gulf University is holding special courses for medical staff arranged through the region's governments and non-government groups.

The training courses are also structured to ensure that healthcare professionals specialising in HIV are kept abreast of all the pertinent issues.

The university is funded by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) which groups Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest supplier of oil, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman.

AIDS has grown to be a serious health problem worldwide, with almost 30 million people infected with the virus that leads to the fatal illness, and some 8,500 new infections reported every day.

A statement issued by the university authorities says the Middle East is no longer immune to the disease with several thousand reported HIV cases, although no figures are available on how many of these involve migrant workers.

The courses at the Gulf University are being led by Prof Robert Pratt, who is the director of the Centre for Sexual Health and HIV studies at the British Thames Valley University.

"The main route of transmission of HIV in the Gulf states is via heterosexual exposure to the virus," says Dr Pratt. The Gulf is a conservative region, reluctant to admit the presence of homosexuality.

Dr Pratt explains that the course for nurses provided an opportunity for them to learn more about the epidemic and effective health education which may prevent its future growth in the Gulf states.

A year after the original course is completed, all nurses will be invited back for a three-day workshop during which they report on their activities and draw up action plans for the future.

Further such courses will be held over the next two years in Oman and the UAE, the statement to the press says, adding that shorter training courses for doctors are now being incorporated into a future programme.

Simultaneously along with the AIDS awareness campaigns, the Gulf authorities expel each month dozens of foreigners infected by HIV and put them on a blacklist to make sure they do not slip back into the region.

In the UAE, the Dubai police say that an average of around 40 people a month are testing positive in the emirate. Captain Hassan Abdullah Hassan of Dubai Immigration Department told local dailies that in June some 36 HIV sufferers were deported.

Blood tests for the virus are routinely done on all expatriates in the UAE, a federation of seven emirates, when they apply for residence visas or for their renewal every three years. An estimated two-thirds of the 2.3 million population are foreigners.

The same rules are applied by other Gulf Arab states, while infected nationals received treatment at home. Flush with petrodollars, the Gulf states have built well-equipped hospitals and provide free medical facilities for nationals.

In the UAE, health officials told IPS that they would take part in the 4th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific coming up at the end of this month in Manila which is organised by the Delhi-based UNAIDS, a subsidiary of the United Nations Development Programme.

The officials said other GCC countries are also expected to participate as the region has a common stand on combating AIDS and protecting their conservative societies.

Compared to the relatively small number of AIDS sufferers in the Gulf region, Dr Poonam Chandra from the Abu Dhabi-based New Medical Centre says that sexually transmitted diseases (STD) are rampant.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says developing countries are the hardest hit, with 90 percent of persons with hiv living there. But while some countries have taken the initiative to combat the fatal illness, others are still lagging behind unable to make use of the positive developments and considerable progress achieved in dealing with AIDS.

The incapability of the developing countries to make use of these developments is attributed to the lack of resources and its effects on the efforts exerted to combat AIDS, notably in the field of clinical management which focuses on providing care to AIDS patients, improve the quality of their lives and delay the deterioration of their health.

WHO's eastern Mediterranean region office held a meeting on clinical management for AIDS patients in Damascus, Syria, last August which was attended by several clinical management experts including from the Gulf. (End/IPS/am/an/97)

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