NACO admits that HIV figures are all wrong

NACO admits that HIV figures are all wrong
Sreelatha Menon

New Delhi, July 30: The national aids control organisation (naco) head J.V.R.Prasada Rao has said that NACO would not publish the number of actual cases reported from different States anymore as these were mostly inaccurate.

``States provide the figures on the basis of patients seen in hospitals. But these are not dependable,'' he said. He also said that often the States fail to update figures or there is lack of interaction between the centre and states leading to false projections of HIV cases.

NACO annual report from next year will depend entirely on figures provided by sample surveys done at sentinel surveillance centres across the country. There are 180 centres at present to which 55 new ones are being added, he said. Each centre would pick up 400 blood samples each year and out of these the number of HIV positives would reflect on the per centage of HIV positive cases in that area, he said.

Asked how this would ensure accuracy, he said that it would be done every year and that would give a better idea than taking up visible cases only.

NACO has been criticised recently by a non governmental organsation Joint Action Council Kannur based in Delhi for its inaccurate data on HIV and AIDS cases. JACK convenor Purushottaman Mulloli has pointed out inaccuracies especially in NACO's figures for Kerala and Manipur. The latter considered to be having the largest number of AIDS cases according to Mulloli has been showing a decrease in the number of cases screened while showing an increase in the number of HIV cases. As new cases are added on to the existing numbers screened making an increase inevitable, the decrease had roused suspicions.

Rao said that JACK had pointed out inaccuracies in data especially in Manipur and Kerala. ``However, improvement in data collection has been on the cards for some time. Besides we have been giving data based on sentinel surveillance figures to Parliament too,'' Rao said. ``The national figure based on reported cases is only 90,000. But we are going by sentinel surveillance figures which give us 3.5 million HIV cases in the country,'' Rao said.

Mulloli who has brought these allegations of inaccuracy against NACO said that Rao should be tried and punished for misleading the public and the Parliament for the last six years. This proves that NACO is a national security threat as it has been whipping up a fear psychosis and defrauding the public and misusing public money by projecting exaggerated figures.

The inaccuracies are evident in data published in naco's country reports for 1996, 1998 and 1999, which shows that some statistics have remained unchanged in a few states. NACO reports show that cumulative number of persons screened in Kerala was 43,927 in 1997 and remained static at 44,547 from 1998-2000. The number of HIV-positive cases in Kerala has remained unchanged at 215 ever since 1996, upto May this year, while the number of AIDS cases has been same --102-- over all these years.

However data sent by the State AIDS surveillance centres for 1996 show that 36,304 persons were screened, of whom 795 were found to be HIV-positive and 190 were full-blown AIDS cases far more than the NACO data.

The data for Manipur shows an decrease in cumulative number of persons screened, from 40,557 upto 1996 to 29,975 upto 1998. But the number of HIV-positives shot up from 3,712 in 1996 to 5,327 in 1998!

Rao said that reporting of actual cases leads to under-reporting and surveillance data would give a more reliable picture of the HIV scenario. He laughed when told that there has been criticism that NACO has been over-reporting and hyping up HIV and said that on the contrary there was gross under-reporting.