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Responding to HIV and AIDS
in India health and nutrition
At one end while it is needed to step up research to understand the rural
dynamics of the epidemic, at the other end HIV testing, provisioning of
treatment and condoms, quality health personnel and awareness generation needs
to be scaled-up as per the rural needs
Taruni, from Guntur
district of Andhra Pradesh recently delivered a healthy baby girl. She is an
HIV positive from the district which has the highest HIV prevalence in the country
and has been on Antiretroviral Treatment (ART) since the last few years.
Early screening and diagnosis of HIV, followed by the treatment regime
prevented the transmission of the disease from Taruni to her child - undoubtedly
good news for many in the fight to combat HIV and AIDS.
India has come a long way
since 1982, when the first case of HIV was diagnosed in Mumbai and in the
same year the first AIDS case reported in Chennai.
Thereafter in 1986 the first HIV case through injection drug use (IDU) was diagnosed in Manipur. In India the
epidemic is of concentrated nature with almost 90 percent of infections
transmitted through one of the following three routes -heterosexual contact,
homosexual contact and injection drug use.
The virus is concentrated
mostly among sex workers, men who have sex with men, transgender, injecting drug
users, and bridge populations like clients of sex workers, truckers, prison
inmates, street children and migrants. At present, there is an estimated 2.39 million
people living with HIV, 39 percent of whom are women and 3.5 percent children below
15 years. Broadly, the Government’s response to prevent and contain HIV and
AIDS has been through awareness generation and prevention programmes; regular
surveillance for HIV and AIDS related data and research focusing on
epidemiology of HIV and AIDS.
