STATEMENT BY UNION HEALTH
MINISTER ON HIV FIGURES
The Minister
for Health and Family Welfare, Shri Shatrughan Sinha, made the
following statement here today:
"We have come
across press reports quoting alarming figures regarding prevalence
and spread of HIV/AIDS in India. Having taken a number of initiatives
and put in place many targeted interventions to generate awareness
and to educate the public, we do not wish to contribute to unnecessary
panic and alarm.
We have in India
around 4 million people living with HIV. This is true. It is however,
completely inaccurate to claim that India will have over 25 million
people living with HIV/AIDS by 2010. We are updating each year,
our data-set and information on the epidemiology and demography
of HIV/AIDS. Accordingly, we are surprised by the figures being
freely cited. I would request all concerned to share with us the
details on which these estimations are based.
Nationally, the prevalence
of HIV continues to be categorised as low. There may be pockets
of high infection - six states of India have a generalised epidemic.
In these states, there are also a few districts where there is
only about two per cent prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the general
population.
We are particularly
mindful of the fact that the rest of the country with low prevalence
of HIV/AIDS has high vulnerability on account of (a) lower levels
of awareness (b) high migration to high-risk states for economic
betterment (c) high levels of multi-partner sex/needle exchange
(d) high incidence of untreated STDs.
The National AIDS
Control Organisation is carefully targeting each of these aspects."
