New Delhi: India was branded as the country that had the highest number of people living with HIV/AIDS last year.
However, the numbers have come down drastically now, not because of excellent intervention programmes but because the method used earlier was a faulty one.
Says Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss, “The virus is now on the decline. It is stabilising in places and the estimates are between 2 - 3.1 million.”
Going by last year's estimate of 5.7 million, one would say that it is a huge improvement, but it isn’t quite so.
NACO and AIDS agencies who helped with the estimates say that for all these years the figures that were given out were not actual figures or in other words, the method used was faulty.
“There has been a gradual decline which is working well for us,” says DG NACO, Sujatha Rao.
It was a broad sample that threw up exaggerated figures. This year however, NACO depended on a wide variety of methods that included population studies like the National Family Health Survey.
This helped them zero in on what could be the most accurate estimates of the epidemic in India. At present 0.3 per cent of the population is infected.
But HIV continues to emerge in new areas. The data has identified 29 districts with high prevalence including West Bengal, Orissa, Rajasthan and Bihar. Meanwhile, Dharawad in Karnataka has the highest prevalence- that is over six per cent.
For the first time, government and aids agencies agree that this could be the most accurate figure for HIV. But now the worry is that, with this drop in numbers, will HIV become a low priority issue?
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