Prevalence of HIV/AIDS among jail inmates in Sindh.

There is currently an ongoing epidemic of HIV/AIDS in Sindh Province. The Sindh Government has established a program for delivering HIV/AIDS prevention services to jail inmates. The objective of this study was to establish baseline HIV prevalence in Sindh jails. Anonymous unlinked volunteer testing was offered to 15000 jail inmates across nine jails in six cities of Sindh, of which 4987 (33%) agreed to be tested, using Abbot Determine rapid testing kit for HIV. Final analysis was done on 4897 samples. Majority of HIV+ve cases were from Karachi (0.7%, n = 32), followed by Sukkur (0.14%, n = 7), Larkana (0.08%, n = 4), Hyderabad (0.06%, n = 3), Shikarpur (0.04%, n = 2) and Khairpur (0.02%, n = 1) jails. Among women prisoners, only three foreigners were found HIV+ve. The overall HIV prevalence was 1% (n = 49) in the study sample. This study establishes the presence of HIV among jail inmates in Sindh and further necessitates detailed behavioural study for risk assessment in this subpopulation.