India reduced HIV/AIDS by 50% while its pharmaceutical companies played a major role in care and treatment by supplying 86% of the first line drugs to the poorest countries.
If the recent UNAIDS report is any indication, India is on course to reverse the spread of HIV in the country. “In India, there has been a decline of almost 50% in new HIV infections over the last decade. The numbers have fallen from 2.4 lakh in 2001 to 1.2 lakh in 2009,” said Dr Charles Gilks, UNAIDS country coordinator in India.
The report was released in the capital on Tuesday and suggests the AIDS epidemic has been halted and that India is among the few countries to have achieved a significant decline in new HIV infection rates. “HIV prevalence rate in India has fallen from 0.4% in 2001 to 0.3% in 2009,” Gilks said.
Globally, new HIV infections fell by nearly 20% in the past decade while AIDS-related deaths were down by around 20% in the last five years. The number of people living with HIV was stabilising, the report said. In Asia, an estimated 49 lakh people lived with HIV in 2009 — about the same as five years earlier. However, there were 3.6 lakh people newly infected with HIV in 2009 — 20% lower than the figure of 4.5 lakh in 2001.
In Asia, the epidemic remained concentrated largely among people who inject drugs, sex workers (FSW) and their clients, and men who have sex with men (MSM). About 90% of people newly infected with HIV in India were believed to have acquired it during unprotected sex, but the common use of contaminated injecting equipment by two or more people at the same time is the main mode of HIV transmission in the country’s north-eastern states.
In southern India, up to 15% of FSWs were living with HIV. However, a four-year prevention programme in 18 of Karnataka’s 27 districts has almost halved HIV prevalence among young antenatal clinic attendees (from 1.4% to 0.8%), the report said.
Of the estimated 45 lakh people in Asia who inject drugs, more than half live in China, while India, Pakistan, and Vietnam also have large numbers of people doing the same. High HIV prevalence among MSMs was reported in several countries. It was between 7% and 18% in parts of southern India, and 9% in parts of rural Tamil Nadu.
India was among the 32 countries which reported 60% greater condom use among men who had sex with more than one partner in the past 12 months.
It was among the 69 countries where more than 60% of sex workers used a condom with their last client.
However, India was also among the countries with the largest number of pregnant women living with HIV in 2009. Among the total number of HIV patients in India, about 40% were women. Women acquired infections mainly from their husbands or intimate partner. The recent data on HIV infection patterns in India revealed that 90% of women in India were infected during long-term relationships.
Of the 25 countries with the highest number of people living with HIV, India reported retaining at least 80% of people in anti-retroviral therapy treatment for at least one year.
The report added that even though the number of new HIV infections was decreasing, there were two new HIV infections for every one person starting HIV treatment, indicating the investments in HIV prevention programmes as a whole have not been adequate or efficiently allocated.
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