5.21 mn Indian adults HIV affected

NACO has warned that figures were just estimates, and Govt had no idea on how many lives HIV has claimed.

About 5.21 million Indian adults are estimated to be living with HIV infection, say the the latest official estimates.

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"According to the estimates in 2005, 5.206 million adult people are HIV positive," Director General of the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) K Sujatha Rao said.

The adult prevalence is still less than one per cent, at 0.91 per cent in the country, she said.

However, she cautioned that the figures were just estimates and the government still did not know how many people were dying of HIV.

Besides, 90 per cent of the infected people did not know that they carried the infection.

In 2004, 5.13 million people were estimated to be infected by the virus, Rao said.

A study to get estimates on mortality due to HIV was on under the Indian Council of Medical Research and results were expected in two months, she added.

Rao said that with an aim of getting better estimates on HIV/AIDS, the government would create 400 new sites for annual sentinel surveillance on HIV by 2006.

Besides, the National Family Health Survey was also being carried out with a sample size 1,34,000, she said, adding that this was a community-based study which would also help in getting estimates on HIV.