Kathmandu, August 17:

Though the campaign against HIV/AIDS was launched in the country long ago, the state has not been able to check HIV/AIDS pandemic, said speakers of an interaction on Prevention of HIV/AIDS organised here today.

“The poor implementation of national HIV/AIDS strategy is one of the reasons why we could not achieve expected results,” said Dr Shankar Sharma, a former vice-chairperson of the National Planning Commission. He pointed out the need to develop a separate mechanism for fighting AIDS. Rajiv Kafle, an activist living with HIV, said about 150 HIV-infected people were undergoing treatment in rehabilitation centres in the country.

Shova Dangol, a representative of sex workers, said, “Once police and commoners find us who we are, they harass us physically, mentally and socially every day.” “All we want is our inclusion in the state-restructuring pro-cess,” said Ananda Pun of the Recovery Nepal.