India announced on Friday that some 4,58-million Indians were living with HIV/Aids at the end of 2002, a significant leap in the figure of 3,97-million the previous year.
A full one percent of the infected are pregnant women, according to Meenakshi Datta Ghosh, project director of the National Aids Control Organisation (Naco).
Ghosh told a media conference here that according to the 2002 survey, 61,5% of the infected population were males. India has more than one billion people.
South Africa, with an infected population of around five million and a total population of about 42-million, has the largest number of people living with HIV/Aids.
”At the upper level, 4,58-million people are living withHIV/Aids in the country, according to our latest survey (for 2002),” Ghosh said.
”HIV/Aids in India is not only confined to high-risk groups and in cities, but is gradually spreading into rural areas and the general population,” she warned.
”In states like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Manipur, Nagaland, and Tamil Nadu, HIV prevalence rates among pregnant women have crossed the one percent mark,” she added.
The United Nations (UN) top official on Aids, Peter Piot, stressed the need for the urgent implementation of prevention programmes.
”As HIV prevalence continues to rise in some Indian states, the challenge now is to rapidly scale up Aids prevention programmes nationwide, make them sustainable and ensure that Aids treatment is widely accessible to people living with HIV/Aids,” Piot, executive director of UNAids, told the briefing.
Piot is in New Delhi to attend the biggest forum on the Aids crisis ever held in India.
The National Convention of the Parliamentary Forum on HIV/Aids, meeting in New Delhi on Saturday and Sunday, will gather legislators, state ministers, mayors and local leaders. – Sapa-AFP