Saudi Arabia will host an AIDS workshop on International AIDS Day on Dec. 1 as part of efforts to increase public awareness about the disease and to ensure more care and dignity for patients suffering from it. This will be the first workshop of its kind in the Kingdom to discuss various aspects of the disease in an open forum, a change of approach on the part of the state-owned health institutions, reported Jeddah-based 'Arab News'. "This first AIDS workshop, to be organized here in cooperation with King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center (KFSH&RC), seeks to increase awareness about the disease and how to diagnose, treat and offer support to the patients suffering from AIDS/HIV," said Dr. Abdullah Al-Hokail, chairman of the Workshop Organizing Committee. Spelling out the details of the AIDS workshop, Dr. Al-Hokail said discussions at the conference would cover epidemiology of HIV/AIDS, HIV among women in the Kingdom, identification and diagnosis of the disease and the national AIDS program. The workshop, to be held at the KFSH's Postgraduate Center auditorium, will help to map out preventive measures and a strategy to deal with the growing number of cases. Al-Hokail, however, said that the growth of this disease in the Kingdom is not as alarming as in many other countries. "Though many countries have achieved good results in reducing the number of infections it is unfortunate that the incidence is on the rise in most developing countries especially the Middle East," he said. "In Saudi Arabia there were some encouraging moves recently and more realistic figures have been released, but still we are too far from reaching the minimum requirement in dealing with this major problem," said the chairman. --more 1357 Local Time 1057 GMT
