A pediatric AIDS/HIV treatment center has been opened at the Hayatabad Medical Complex (HMC) in Peshawar with the financial assistance provided by the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF). A trained doctor and a counseling expert will provide free treatment and support to HIV-infected children brought to the center. The one-year project, ending on December 31st 2009, will then be given over to the provincial government to make the center a permanent department at the HMC.

Besides treatment, the AIDS treatment center for children will also provide free education on preventing the incidence of AIDS and safe copulation etc. This will prove a significant advance in the efforts for controlling the epidemic of AIDS in the province. Most people in Pakistan, especially in the northwestern areas, still consider AIDS a taboo topic. Even patients whose symptoms are suspected to be linked to retroviral infections do not confidently seek treatment, as has been the case with AIDS patients from the less developed towns in NWFP.

According to the doctors serving in Peshawar and northwestern areas (like Kohat and Hangu), majority of AIDS patients in Pakistan, who come to seek treatment, are deportees from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and other Middle Eastern countries where they had been for employment. After returning, these patients usually kept their disease from their spouses and continued to procreate, siring HIV infected children. The pediatric AIDS treatment facility at the HMC, Peshawar, is the first of its kind in the country to save AIDS-infected children coming from within Peshawar and also those from other parts of the country.