GENEVA — The Red Cross federation said Thursday, June 25 that the problem of HIV is often ignored in disaster relief work, exposing patients and other disaster victims to unnecessary risks.

Relief workers should do more to prevent unsafe blood donations, protect women and children from rape, and minimize the disruption to HIV treatment, according to a 250-page report published by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Low-cost measures and better planning can go a long way toward minimizing the risk of spreading the disease in a disaster zone, IFRC said.

Testing blood donors for HIV “doesn’t necessarily happen everywhere in the heat of a crisis” the federation’s top HIV official, Mukesh Kapila, said.

“They may run out of the reagent in order to test, or they may consider it a low-prevalence population and therefore take the risk”, he added. “It only takes one person to contaminate the supply.”

“It’s a question of adding HIV as a dimension in planning a response to disasters,” Kapila said, comparing it to the efforts relief workers already make to reduce sexual exploitation in the aftermath of major catastrophes.

With the United Nations estimating that 33 million people around the world have HIV, the report notes that according to the global body’s own definition the disease is itself a disaster in some countries.

Some 2.1 million people died of the disease in 2007, compared with a ten-year low of 23,000 who were killed by natural and man-made disasters such as storms, earthquakes and plane crashes.

“Lets not forget that the HIV disaster takes place invisibly,” said Kapila. “A few here, a few hundred there, if you add up the numbers it’s a major disaster for many communities.”


This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition June 27, 2008.