The UN and WHO cut their estimates of the number of people with HIV to 6.3 million, after a revision by India. The latest estimates show these are 33.2 million with HIV globally. It is 16% less than the 39.5 million it estimated in 2006 clearly showing that the global burden of HIV till now was highly overstated.
In July 2006, India announced that there were 2.5 million people living with HIV/AIDS ,about 2.7million fewer cases previously estimated. India’s HIV prevalence figures in the general population also dipped to .36% against .9% making India the worst affected country with the deadly disease after South Africa 5.5million and Nigeria 2.9 million.
What made the difference was the methodology used by India in 2006-the estimates referred as closest to the truth was reached after studying the data from the country’s 1,122 sentinel surveillance sites as against the 155 such sites in 1998.A massive sero-prevalence study testing 1.5 lakh random blood samples from 29 states also gave information about India’s actual burden of HIV.
However the revamped estimates still represent a massive human tragedy. AIDS remains the fourth biggest killer nationwide. Every day in 2007,more than 6,800 people were infected with HIV. Women made up half of those infected. Over 5700 died from it every day. An estimated 1.7 lakh people died of the disease in India alone last year.
Leave Your Comments