KARACHI: The abrupt closure of an HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) prevention program by the United Nation Development Program (UNDP) has exposed 1,500 transgender patients in Karachi to risk, said the community representatives on Monday as UNDP officials assured to resolve the issue soon.
The UNDP in Pakistan became the principal recipient of a Global Fund grant in July last year to implement a comprehensive response to HIV in the country. The project is designed to ensure HIV prevention while providing care and treatment services to marginalized communities, including transgender people.
The Global Fund was supposed to provide a grant of $47 million from July 2021 to December 2023.
However, an organization representing transgender people, which had been working on the project in collaboration with the UN agency, said its funding was abruptly stopped while it was waiting for renewal of its contract in June 2022.
“The UNDP renewed agreement every three months with us before we were told it would sign a yearlong agreement,” Bindya Rana, executive director of Gender Interactive Alliance (GIA), told Arab News. “We waited for three months and 28 days for the renewal of the agreement until we were formally informed on July 28 that our contract would not be renewed.”
She added the UN agency did not specify any reason.
“We told them that we had continued our services to the community, asking them why transgender people were targeted in Karachi,” she said. “We are providing treatment services to 1,500 HIV patients which include 1,300 people who need regular medication. The closure of funding will impact their treatment.”
Rana informed her organization was providing HIV screening services to around 19,000 registered transgender people every three months in Karachi.
“People from other provinces and places like Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan also come to Karachi for treatment,” she continued. “The decision will be a big blow to our prevention efforts to stop the transmission of the disease.”
However, the UNDP said the GIA was a subrecipient of the program from July 2021 to June 2022. It added the alliance’s grant had not been terminated, though it had expired on June 30.
“We are in discussion on the issue and hope to have it resolved it as soon as possible,” the UN agency said in an official response to Arab News on Monday. “When a decision is made, it will be announced accordingly. What is important is that the support to the community will continue.”
The UNDP said the agency would continue to support local organizations to provide lifesaving human rights and health services to transgenders and other communities in need.
“We are honored to work on a regular basis with CBOs [community building organizations] led by transgender individuals,” UNDP said.
While the UNDP official assured to resolve the issue, representatives of the transgender community feared an HIV outbreak like Larkana, a district in Sindh, where nearly a thousand people, including children, tested positive for the disease in 2019.
“It is very important to have a policy for transgender people,” Shahzadi Rai, GIA’s project field supervisor for the HIV prevention program, said. “We have contacted government officials but they don’t have a policy.”
“This was health related project and such projects are not abruptly closed,” she noted. “Transgender people are already victims of discrimination and they don’t usually go to hospitals for [HIV] treatment due to the same social behavior. We treat them at our facility.”
The UNDP, however, said the organization was a staunch supporter of human rights particularly those of the most vulnerable including transgender individuals and communities.
It added that technical support for the development of the rights bill, which culminated in the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2018, and support in the establishment of the first ever protection center for vulnerable transgender persons in Islamabad and Rawalpindi were some of the initiatives UNDP had taken in Pakistan.
Published at Arab News on 27th July 2023