India
HIV Prevalence in India is Second Highest in World
By Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, India
May 25, 2005, 23:30

The estimated number of HIV infections for the year 2004 stood at 5.134 million up from 5.106 million in 2003. In terms of prevalence percentage, India continues to stand second next to South Africa which has 5.3 million HIV infections. These estimates were released at a crowded press conference here today by the Union Health and Family Welfare Minister, Dr. Anbumani Ramadoss.

In comparison to 2003 estimates, there has been an additional 28,000 infections in 2004 as compared to 5.2 lakh additional infections in 2003.

As per the estimates released today, the trends show that there is no galloping HIV epidemic in India as a whole, as no evidence of upsurge in HIV prevalence has been observed in the country. However, there are sub-national epidemics in various parts of the country with evidence of high prevalence of HIV among both STD clinic attendees and antenatal clinic attendees. The HIV prevalence has seen a significantly increasing trend among STD clinic attendees in 16 sites and among antenatal clinic attendees in 7 sites located in States of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Pondicherry, Assam, Bihar, Chattisgarh, Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Orissa, Goa and Manipur etc.

India remains a low prevalence country with overall HIV prevalence of 0.91% i.e. less than 1% of the population.

As far as Tamil Nadu is concerned, there are early signs of sero-stabilization. Tamil Nadu was a high prevalence state and hence there is no scope of complacency as the coverage of the target population is still less than full and certain sections of the population such as core risk groups, migraines and young people need to be adequately addressed.

As regards the estimation process, the National AIDS Control Organisation involved two independent institutions. These institutes include Institute of Research in Medical Statistics (IRMS), New Delhi and National Institute of Health and Family Welfare (NIHFW), New Delhi. To ensure independence and objectivity, the whole exercise has been done as per laid down procedure and guidelines of WHO and UNAIDS.

Before finalizing the HIV estimate and results of the data analysis several steps have been followed to ensure independent assessment.

* The assumptions used for sex and urban-rural differential and STD prevalence had been corroborated in 2003 and the suggestions were to continue the new assumptions till the time when fresh evidence of deviation is available.

* Preliminary analysis of the data is carried out independently at two above-mentioned professional institutions, to minimize the error.

* ICMR convened a series of meetings with a group of experts consisting of eminent Epidemiologists, Biostatisticians, Demographers and experts from international organizations such as WHO, UNAIDS etc.

* A core committee set by DG, ICMR reviewed them in details before finalisation of estimates.

All rights reserved by www.rxpgnews.com