The UN office in Nepal together with its 17 partners is geared to implement the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) funded-projects in Acham, Banke, Chitwan, Doti, Jhapa and Rupendehi districts of Nepal as soon as the resources are made available to the UNDP, the management support agency for the projects in question. Needless to say, such programmes are crucial to a least developed country like Nepal that has till date not even been able to fight curable diseases like Malaria, not to talk about the alarming spread of the ghastly HIV/AIDS pandemic in both the cities and the remote villages. The first AIDS case in Nepal was reported in 1988. Until the late 1990s, Nepal was classified as having a low-level epidemic. However, since 1997, HIV infection has been on the rapid rise among injecting drug users and female sex workers. In 2003 various reports claimed an estimated number of 60,000 people living with the HIV virus in the country. Some 715 AIDS cases and 191 deaths were reported with male-female ratio of 2.4:1 by 2004.

Nepal is at present classified as a country experiencing concentrated epidemic, particularly among women and children. According to UNAIDS/WHO surveillance report, HIV prevalence among women engaged in flesh trade increased from 0.7 per cent in 1992 to 17 per cent in 2002. Tragically, all the figures are most likely to rise steadily as several vulnerability factors like high rate of male migration, prostitution, poverty, low socio-economic status of women, illicit drug trafficking and so forth can worsen the situation. In addition, a large number of young Nepali girls are recruited as sex workers in Indian cities and a huge number of males working in India and other countries frequent brothels there and within Nepal. Thus, in addition to the increasing number of HIV infections occurring among persons with high HIV-risk behaviours in Nepal, the number of Nepalis infected with HIV abroad and who have or are most likely to return to Nepal is increasing. AIDS is known to cripple the economy and disrupt the social equilibrium once it spirals out of control as many countries in Africa have experienced. Hence it is urgent that the Global Fund is extended beyond these six districts if the country is to be saved from falling into a full-blown HIV/AIDS grip in the days to come.