This book is the first full-length study of HIV/AIDS work in relation to government and NGOs. In the early 2000s, Pakistan’s response to HIV/AIDS was scaled-up and declared an area of urgent intervention. This response was funded by international donors requiring prevention, care and support services to be contracted out to NGOs - a global policy considered particularly important in Pakistan where the high risk populations are criminalized by the state. Based on unparalleled ethnographic access to government bureaucracies and their dealings with NGOs, Qureshi examines how global policies were translated by local actors and how they responded to the evolving HIV/AIDS crisis. The book encourages readers to reconsider the orthodoxy of policies regarding public-private partnership by critiquing the resulting changes in the bureaucracy, civil society and public goods. It is a must-read for students, scholars and practitioners concerned with neoliberal agendas in global health and development.

Contributed articles on HIV-positive persons and their social acceptance, stigma, and care in the three South Asian countries; supported under a fellowship from UNDP.

Pakistan still has a window of opportunity to act decisively to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. According to UNAIDS estimates HIV prevalence is 0.1 percent among adult population in Pakistan. The officially reported cases are, however, much lower than the estimated cases. As in many countries, underreporting is due mainly to the social stigma attached to the infection, limited surveillance and voluntary counseling and testing systems, as well as the lack of knowledge among the general population and health practitioners. Until recently, Pakistan was classified as a low-prevalence country with many risk factors that could lead to the rapid development of an epidemic. The presence of significant risk factors such as the very low use of condoms among vulnerable populations including female sex workers (FSW), men who have sex with men (MSMs), truckers, and Hijras, low use of sterile syringes among injecting drug users (IDUs), inadequate blood transfusion screening and high level of professional donors, large numbers of migrants and refugees may lead to an epidemic situation of HIV/AIDS in Pakistan.

The Census Bureau of the U.S. Department of Commerce presents demographic data on HIV/AIDS in Pakistan. The bureau includes epidemiological data, including data on HIV in drug users, HIV in patients with sexually transmitted diseases (STD), HIV in pregnant women, and HIV in sex workers in Pakistan.