The number of people infected with HIV in India has risen dramatically, with new Indian government estimates
released late last month showing that more than 4.58 million Indians were living with HIV/AIDS at the end of
2002, an increase of more than half a million over the previous year.
More than 10 percent of new infections worldwide in 2002 took place in India, which now has the world’s second-largest number of PLWHAs, after South Africa, where about 5 million of the 42 million population are infected.
But while infection rates in South Africa appear to be slowing, India, with a population of more than one billion, may be facing a much more extensive epidemic than was previously believed.
The 25 July announcement, by India’s National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), came on the eve of a major parliamentary forum on AIDS in the capital, New Delhi.
“HIV/AIDS in India is not only confined to high-risk groups and in cities, but is gradually spreading into rural areas and the general population,” NACO Director Meenakshi Datta Ghosh told journalists.
UNAIDS head Peter Piot, speaking in New Delhi, said that India has a “king-sized” problem, calling on the country to rapidly scale up prevention programs. In a blunt address to the parliamentary forum, Piot called on India to broaden its focus away from abstinence-based programs, fight widespread taboos on discussion of sexual matters and promote condom use.
India “has to act now before the epidemic infects tens of millions of people, which will surely happen if things continue down this path,” Piot said.
His grim predictions follow a warning by the director of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Julie Gerberding, that India, China and Cambodia are on the verge of an AIDS “catastrophe,” comparing the situation in parts of Asia with that in Africa ten years ago.
According to one recent study, the number of people living with HIV/AIDS in India could reach 25 million by the end of the decade.
“This is the most pessimistic estimate, but it is not impossible. This is why the time to act is now,” Piot said.
— BBC, AFP
