India should get more aid for AIDS

India should get more aid for AIDS
SANCHITA SHARMA

NEW DELHI, MARCH 28: India should get more global funding to fight AIDS, said UNAIDS India Programme Advisor David Miller today. ``While India has roughly 10 per cent of the world's population of people living with HIV/AIDS, it attracts just 1 per cent of the global resources for tackling the disease,'' he said. ``The funding is far less than needed and this imbalance requires immediate action,'' said Miller.

Of the 36.1 million people living with AIDS in the world, 3.86 million people live in India, found the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) at the end of its third national sentinel surveillance in 2000. The budget allocation for controlling AIDS this year was Rs 210 crore, with 30 crore being set aside for the north-eastern states where injected drug use is high and the most common cause of infection.

Miller also announced the beginning of the five-day International Conference on the Reduction of Drug Related Harm on April 1 in Delhi, which will focus on injectible drug use as a source of infection in India. Heterosexual sex is the most common cause of HIV spread, accounting for over 81 per cent cases in India. Injected drug use is the source of 5.2 per cent of the infection, according to NACO.

``But this does not mean that injectible drug users can be ignored because they infect their sexual partners and spread the disease to the general population as well,'' said Miller. ``The vulnerability of women becomes apparent when you find that over 90 per cent women in India with HIV/AIDS have had just one sexual partner, usually their husband,'' he added. They are at further risk of giving the infection to their children.

Miller said that while there was no steep AIDS epidemic curve in India, pockets of concentrated epidemic exist. Recognising the problem, NACO identified 45 districts across the country as HIV hotspots where intense and immediate intervention was needed to stop the infection from spreading further.

Already, HIV infection has moved from high-risk areas to the general population in some states like Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra and Nagaland, where it is over 1 per cent in women who go to ante-natal clinics for check-ups. In some places like Mumbai, it has crossed over 2 per cent of the general population and over 5 per cent in the trucking town of Namakkal in Tamil Nadu.