The initial response of South Asian governments to AIDS when it appeared two decades ago was to hide behind the mantle of 'Asian morals' — a strategy that succeeded only in obfuscating knowledge of the disease's deadly, unchecked spread. After acknowledging the problem in the early 1990s, efforts to treat the disease's victims and prevent further infections have been hampered by a lack of reliable data and a glut of ill-conceived or under-funded programmes. India, the largest country of South Asia, is consequently burdened with a larger HIV/AIDS problem than the others. How many AIDS cases are there in India? Should the focus be on prevention or treatment? And, most importantly, in what direction is the disease headed? Policy failures aside, these and other basic questions remain.
It is appropriate to begin an article on AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) in India by asking lots of freewheeling questions and presenting 'facts'. Here they are:
Approximately 42 million people the world over are supposed to be infected with HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), the causative agent of AIDS. Almost one million people in Asia and the Pacific acquired HIV in 2002, bringing to an estimated 7.2 million the number of people now living with the virus in this region — a 10 percent increase since 2001. A further 490,000 people are estimated to have died of AIDS in the past year. About 2.1 million young people (aged 15-24) are living with HIV. India's national adult HIV prevalence rate of less than one percent offers little indication of how serious the situation facing the country is. An estimated 3.97 million people in India were living with HIV at the end of 2001 — the second highest figure in the world, after South Africa. One Indian is infected with HIV every minute. 10 percent of the world's HIV cases are found in India. Furthermore, about 60 percent of the country's population, the highest number of cases worldwide, is supposed to have tuberculosis, a disease that often preys on HIV-weakened bodies.
How are these statistics arrived at? Is the AIDS scare being blown out of proportion? Some practitioners of ayurvedic medicine say that it is a disease that is mentioned in ancient medical texts. If that is so, why is it only in the last two decades that one has been hearing about it?