No govt intervention for HIV positive returnee migrants

DOT Desk: The government has no facilities in place to provide any service to increasing number of HIV infected returnee migrants, reports The New Age.
Absence of intervention programmes exposes spouses and children of infected returnees to the risk of getting infected, migrant right campaigners told New Age.
An unknown number of infected returnees die in silence without getting any treatment, they said.
They urged the government to introduce intervention facilities to screen the returnees and provide needed medical care to the infected ones.
Expatriates welfare and overseas employment ministry’ secretary in charge Rownaq Jahan told New Age on Monday that the returnee migrants’ issues would get importance. In 2015, out of 469 newly infected HIV people, 140 were returnee migrants and their spouses.
In 2016, out of 578 newly infected people, 189 were returnee migrants and their spouses, according to National AIDS/STD Programme data.
Returnee migrant workers always infected others in Bangladesh, according to study report, ‘A Review of HIV Policy Progression and Migrants’ Health Rights in Five Origin Countries,’ published by CARAM Asia in November 2018.
However little solid number of HIV infected migrant workers is available’, says the report.
In 2006, the National AIDS/STD programme identified that 76 per cent of returnee migrant workers and their spouses were HIV infected.
In 2014, the NASP identified that 64.3 per cent of 645 HIV positive adults had worked abroad.
According to the same report Bangladesh’s first HIV infected person was a returnee migrant worker.
OKUP chairman Shakirul Islam who completed Bangladesh chapter’s research on HIV policy progression and migrant’s health rights in five origin countries including Bangladesh, Cambodia Pakistan, Philippines and Sri Lanka, said that there was no national response to HIV infected migrant workers in Bangladesh.
According to the CARAM study, a response programme was developed by the NASP for the migrant workers returning with HIV infection during 2013-15, with support from IOM, UNAIDS and two million $ provided by the World Bank, but the response programme was never rolled out.