Doubts cast over India's AIDS figures

A controversy has erupted after Indian health workers have, expressed doubts over the new HIV/AIDS figures released by the government, they says the figures are too good to be true.

The country's National Aids Control Body (NACO), says new HIV cases have come down by 95 per cent in just a year.

They announced this week that only 28,000 new cases of HIV infections were reported in 2004 compared with 520,000 in 2003, according to the latest data. The figures were compiled by two independent research organisations.

According to an official at USAID, the United States development arm, the agency supports the government claim, but have re-iterated the comment made by NACO head S Y Quraishi's that the figures needed to be treated with caution.

Many health workers fear that the latest estimates could lull the anti-Aids effort into a false sense of success.

Ryan Fernandes of Sahara, a New Delhi-based voluntary group working with HIV-positive women, says his organisation feels there is something drastically wrong with the figures given, and has absolutely no idea how they arrived at them.

Fernandes says that at the grassroots level things are much different, and everyday they are getting to know of new cases.

Ratan Singh, co-ordinator of the Manipur Network of Positive People, agrees and says that since September 2004, there has been an increase of 500-plus patients and the awareness programmes are not having an impact.

He says there is no reduction, and the figures are becoming higher and higher and the stigma and discrimination is still there.

Purushothaman Mulloli of the Joint Action Council Kannur, an umbrella group of NGOs in the southern Kerala state said the NGOs who are talking about epidemics have no idea about epidemiology, and are merely sponsored agencies of pharmaceutical lobbies who are promoting the market.

R Elango of the Karnataka Network of People Living With HIV/AIDS says the new figures are controversial as they are seeing a lot of new infections.

He concedes that the government is implementing a lot of programmes, but wants more information about the numbers in order to be able to discuss these issues.

He said an overwhelming number of patients did not report the disease due to stigma or even know of it due to lack of awareness, and many preferred to go to private hospitals, which were not included in the HIV count.

Elango says one of his friends died of AIDS at home while another died on a beach last week, and they were certainly not counted.