According to a recent BBC News report, a national HIV hotline in Egypt has been providing prevention information for over 10 years—emphasizing caller anonymity in a nation where HIV/AIDS is viewed as a foreign concern that remains highly stigmatized (newsvote.bbc.co.uk).
“We receive a lot of calls about modes of transmission, about symptoms, though, even now, we still get a lot of callers who hang up because they are afraid that we might be tracking them and their numbers, which, we are not, of course,” says Dr. Ahmad Bahaa, who manages the hotline and was quoted in the report.
BBC News adds that the hotline, supported by the United Nations Children’s fund, targets those most at risk, including gay men, commercial sex workers, injection-drug users, and the nation’s estimated 1 million homeless children. Between 2004 and 2005, the number of reported HIV/AIDS cases in Egypt skyrocketed from 12,000 to 17,000, 12 percent of which were among the 15-24 age group.
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