Fuente : World Bank
http://www.worldbank.org

HIV Is 'Out Of Control' In India

/noticias.info/ Richard Feachem, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria warned that India has overtaken South Africa as the country with the most HIV positive patients, the online edition of the BBC reports.

He warned that the epidemic has spread so quickly that India needed to "wake up" and take the problem seriously, otherwise millions of people will die. "The epidemic [in India] is growing very rapidly. It is out of control. There is nothing happening in India today that is big or serious enough to prevent it," Feachem said. Latest figures provided by the UN agency UNAIDS - released in July 2004 - show that South Africa had the highest total of people with HIV or AIDS in the world, with an estimated 5.3 million infected adults and children in a range of 4.5 to 6.2 million. India's total was put at 5.1 million, but the range estimate was far wider - from 2.5 to 8.5 million - because of the lack of reliable data there in relation to the HIV pandemic.

Agence France Presse reports that Feachem said "the epidemic will grow faster, much faster in (India's) Hindu population than in Moslems," as circumcision is an acknowledged protective factor against the AIDS virus. The biggest form of transmission in India is from heterosexual intercourse with prostitutes. In addition to widespread ignorance and deep-rooted stigma about AIDS, the country also has relatively high prices for anti-HIV drugs, said Feachem. "It is easier to get Indian generic drugs in Africa than it is to get them in India. That is a scandal and has to be changed."

The Financial Times meanwhile reports that India's National AIDS Control Organization (Naco) will more than double its annual budget to fight HIV/AIDS but has rejected Feachem’s warnings that the HIV virus is out of control. New Delhi estimates that at the end of 2004 there were 5.1 million people with HIV, putting India second after South Africa, with 5.4 million. S.Y. Quraishi, director-general of Naco, said yesterday that "playing the numbers game" was counterproductive. “Whether it is more than 5 million, or 3 million or 2 million, we still have a problem. We should not be complacent.”

The business daily further writes that India's Congress-led coalition has made tackling HIV a part of its national policy program. Naco's funding recently grew from Rs2.5 billion ($57 million) to Rs4.2 billion ($95 million). This year Quraishi expects to receive an unprecedented Rs5.3 billion ($121 million). Over the past year Naco has expanded the number of "sentinel sites" it uses to estimate HIV infection rates from 455 to 670, which should make data more accurate. Naco will release the latest HIV estimates for India in May. The daily notes that India may have a high number of HIV cases, but the overall infection rate is less than 1 percent. But in six states, some with large populations, the infection rate is up to nearly one in 20. Quraishi stressed that Naco was trying to "mainstream" the government's response to fighting AIDS.

The Hindu (India) further adds that Quraishi said India was in the process of setting up National Council of AIDS headed by the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh. "We are now focusing on 14 highly-vulnerable States like Uttra Pradesh and Bihar," he added.

Agence France Presse finally notes that in February, India launched its first human clinical trials of the Adeno Associated Vector Borne Vaccine designed to prevent HIV-AIDS. The Indian Council of Medical Research, which carried the tests on 10 volunteers, said Wednesday that the vaccine should hit the market in about five years.


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