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| AIDS cases in India due to drop | | |
BL KAK
NEW DELHI, JULY 1: Indian officials are giving final touches to the statistics relating to the AIDS cases in the country. According to official information, the government will, in the next few days, release sharply lower AIDS figures. The government will also announce a six-fold jump in spending to reduce the rate of infection over the next five years.
Almost three billion dollars, including about a third from foreign donors,will be poured into the next stage of India’s HIV/AIDS prevention efforts to be launched in New Delhi on Friday, July 6. Previous estimates from India’s National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) have put the HIV caseload in this country of more than one billion people at 5.2 million, while UNAIDS in 2006 estimated 5.7 million cases.
That figure made India the country with the highest number of people infected with HIV in the world. NACO director, Sujatha Rao, has stated: “There will certainly be a decline but it has to be understood in the correct context, with the correct reading".
A senior official with UNAIDS, the UN agency that coordinates the campaign against HIV/AIDS, let it be known earlier this month that the numbers would likely drop. “Most probably the figures will be lower than we thought”, said Dennis Broun, country director for UNAIDS India. “When UNAIDS gave the estimate of 5.7 million in India we said it could as low as 3.4 million and as high as nine. That is a very broad range. It might be that it could be even lower”, he said.
Reports in local media have put the new estimate at around three to 3.5 million cases. Officials said the massive drop could be attributed to the fact that the data available this year is better than ever. “There are more sentinel sites than before so we have a better picture of the epidemic,” said Broun, referring to testing sites where samples are taken from members of both low- and high-risk groups, to be used as markers. “We also have a population-based survey, we have a good behavioural surveillance survey, a whole set of surveys has been done in high-presence states among high-risk groups”, Broun added.
More than 1,100 testing sites were used this year as compared to 700 in the past, NACO’s epidemiologist Ajay Kumar Khera has revealed. The north was under-represented before, he said, skewing nationwide estimates towards southern states with higher rates of infection. And a wide-ranging population health survey tested 100,000 adults randomly between December 2005 and August 2006.
International health organisations have for years worried about the possibility of a South Africa-style AIDS epidemic in India, but the new figures being mentioned would mean a fairly low infection rate. However, organisations that work with high-risk groups such as commercial sex workers, intravenous drug users and homosexual men said their work will go on as before.
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