WUNRN
Women's Feature Service
By Pamela Philipose
Dhaka (Women’s
Feature Service) -
Senior Dhaka-based Imam, Mufti Mohammed Abbas Ali Rabbani
feels that Imams play an important role in society and that they can
teach people to desist from wrong-doing and follow the right path.
(Credit: WFS)
Dr Md Abdul
Waheed, Line Director, National AIDS/STD
Programme, remarks: "How can we afford to take the threat lightly? We
have a 156 million population of whom over 40 per cent are in the
reproductive age group." (Credit: WFS)
Asks Dr Md Abdul
Waheed, Line Director, NASP, “How can we afford to take the threat lightly? We
have a 156 million population of whom over 40 per cent are in the reproductive
age group.”
What worries Dr
Waheed particularly are the many risk factors that exist, including low condom
use among the most-at-risk population, a high rate of needle sharing among
injecting drug users (IDUs), the higher prevalence of HIV in countries
bordering Bangladesh and significant levels of internal and external migration
– around eight million people work abroad.
Recent evidence,
according to Dr Waheed, suggests that the geographical coverage of IDUs and
female sex works has almost doubled. In
Recognising the
challenge, the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) has
been providing financial support to the NASP since 2004, and has invested a
total of approximately USD 131 million into initiatives that will carry on
until 2015. This is helping
One of the prime
focus areas of the GFATM has been on prevention services for the most-at-risk
groups, especially through the scaling up of information dissemination, even
among children. Interestingly, information on HIV/AIDS has been incorporated
into school textbooks from Class Seven. “Initially, we found the teachers
reluctant to talk about HIV/AIDS, but after some orientation efforts and
training, most have come on board,” informs Dr Hasan Mahmud, Deputy Programme
Manager, NASP.
All this is being
done through public-private partnerships between the Government of Bangladesh
and Save The Children Fund
An innovative
strategy that evolved from the process was to involve religious leaders in the
effort to raise awareness Dhaka-based Padakhep Manabik Unnayan Kendra was
chosen by Save The Children to anchor this process. Says Iqbal Ahammed,
Padakhep's executive director, “The idea is to get religious institutions in a
conservative country like
Reveals Ahammed, “It
took over a year, in fact, to produce the booklets, each of which reflected the
teachings of the respective religions in the context of HIV/AIDS, and in ways
that were sensitive and which had impact. These booklets are now being
disseminated to the four religious communities through their respective
institutions.” Ahammed's organisation has plans to eventually cover 2,22,000
mosques, 25,500 temples, 2000 pagodas and 500 churches in the country, as part
of this strategy.
But while the general
effort was to bring all religions on board, clearly the fact that 90 per cent
of
What made a senior
Dhaka-based imam like Mohammed Abbas Ali Rabbani get involved in such an
intervention? Sitting in the Padakhep office in the crowded downtown area of
Mohammadpur in
Says Shamim Rabbani,
team leader of the IDU intervention at Padakhep, “The key messages we want
conveyed to the community are basically this: ‘Understand what causes HIV,
protect yourselves against it, and end discrimination against those living with
it’. The challenge, of course, is to get the imams to put these messages out to
the community in ways that we would like them to, but they often modify the
message as they think fit.”
To get the imams to
be on the same page as the NASP is, therefore, often difficult and Padakhep
tries to do this through advocacy work and orientation programmes with the
imams.
According to NASP's
Dr Mahmud, these leaders are generally ready to adopt the policy of the
government, but have their constraints. “For instance, they would not want to
be seen as endorsing promiscuity, so they prefer to keep silent on a sensitive
issue like condom use.” He adds, however, that most imams do not pose hurdles
if others talk about condoms in their presence, “This could be considered an
indirect endorsement of the need for people to understand how they can protect
themselves.”
Mohammed Toslim Uddin
seems to bear this out. A young imam from Manikgonj in northern
According to Imam
Toslim Uddin, while many imams use the television and radio to communicate with
their audiences, inter-personal communication is the need of the hour. “You can
listen to TV or the radio, but you cannot clear your doubts. You can do this
only through direct communication,” he observes. Of course, given that imams
generally interact directly only with the men in the community, getting the
message across directly to women would certainly be more difficult.
But despite the
constraints, Padakhep's Siddique believes this initiative is unique. “We have
been successful in motivating religious leaders to join in this effort. Some
attempts like these have been made in
As the message is
taken further and further into the community, there is also a need to keep the
National HIV/AIDS Programme up-to-date and effective. This is where WHO,
Finally, this is all
about life. As one of the slogans used in the campaign goes, 'AIDS kee? Banchte
Hole Jante Hobe (What is AIDS? It is about learning to live).'