AIDS scene not scary in India

10 July, 2007:

The AIDS scene in India is not as scary as we all had thought. A report says India has an estimated 2.5 million people living with HIV/AIDS, which is about 2.7 million fewer cases than previously estimated.

Pointing out that India is now the third worst affected country with the deadly disease after South Africa which has 5.5 million and Nigeria with 2.9 million, the report went on to add that the prevalence of HIV in the general population is now 0.36 per cent against 0.9 per cent earlier. Till now, India was in second place with an estimated 5.2 million cases.

Meanwhile, the Union Health Ministry launched the ambitious Rs 11,585 crore National AIDS Control Programme III, under which the National Aids Control Organization (NACO) hopes to halt and reverse the tide of HIV epidemic in India by 2011. At the event, Union Minister A Ramadoss, made it a point to reiterate that reliable data has proved that India’s actual HIV burden among the adult population is between 2 million to 3.1 million.

Experts from global agencies like the UNAIDS, CDC, WHO, ICMR, the Union Health Ministry and NGOs like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Clinton Foundation have endorsed the findings after tabulating data from the National Family Health Survey-III and the records available with NACO’s 1,122 sentinel surveillance sites.

The National Family Health Survey-III undertaken by as many as 18 research institutes collected 1.5 lakh random blood samples from 29 states, which after being tested, proved this. The earlier estimate of 5.2 million HIV infected among the age group 15-49 and UNAIDS’s estimate of 5.7 million infected in all age groups was based on anti-natal women who visited the 750 surveillance sentinel sites, the report added.

Under NACP III, India now plans to control the spread of HIV by increasing the number of intervention strategies from 1,029 to 2,100 by 2012.