Publications on People Living With HIV (PLHIV)

Just over 1,500 new cases of HIV/AIDS, most involving sexual transmission, have been reported since January 1984. Surveillance data indicates that prevalence rates are low even among the most vulnerable groups. Awareness of ways to prevent HIV transmission remains high, but has not been translated to behavior change.

HIV was first detected in Cambodia during serological screening of donated blood in 1991. The first cases of AIDS were diagnosed in late 1993 and early 1994. Between 1995-1998, surveillance data from the National AIDS Program (NAP), showed a significant spread of HIV in several key populations.

Vietnam is still considered to have a concentrated HIV/AIDS epidemic, with almost two-thirds of reported HIV infections occurring to intravenous drug users (IDUs) and most of the rest in sex workers.

Bangladesh is still a low HIV prevalence country, but faces tremendous challenges in remaining so. FHI’s behavioral research among other high-risk groups strongly supports the BSS data and indicates that Bangladesh may not escape an HIV/AIDS epidemic.

HIV/AIDS is a major development crisis that affects all sectors. During the last two decades the HIV/AIDS epidemic has spread relentlessly affecting people in all walks of life and decimating the most productive segments of the population particularly women and men between the ages of 20 and 49 years.

Faced with the increasingly devastating impact of HIV/AIDS on individual and community well-being, and on development, life expectancy and childhood mortality, many governments have been reviewing the nature of their response to HIV/AIDS.

Drug use and HIV vulnerability remain issues of great concern for many countries in Asia and the Pacific because surveys indicate that in some geographical areas more than sixty per cent of all injecting drug users are HIV- positive. In several Asian countries, injecting drug users represent the largest group of those who are HIV-positive.

Opportunistic diseases in a person with HIV are the products of two things: the person's lack of immune defenses caused by the virus, and the presence of microbes and other pathogens in our everyday environment.