New Delhi: While there has been an overall decline in the incidence of HIV in India with new cases falling by over 26%, three northeastern states have not followed in on the trend, emerging as the new hotbeds for the virus. Between 2010 and 2017, the number of deaths due to the virus in the country also came down by 56%, as per a report from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS.
According to The Hindu, in response to a question in the Lok Sabha on Friday, the health ministry, however, admitted to a rise in the number of HIV cases in Meghalaya, Mizoram and Tripura owing to high-risk behaviour of needle-sharing among injecting drug users (IDUs) as well as unsafe sexual practices.
At four places in Mizoram and one place in Tripura, the percentage of IDUs being infected with HIV is much greater than the national average of 6.26%. The prevalence of HIV in IDUs was 37.44%, 33.06% and 38.14% in Aizawl, Champhai and Kolasib respectively, the English daily reported.
The healthy ministry had last December conducted an epidemiological investigation to zero in on the reason behind the failure of HIV prevention and treatment programmes in the northeastern region. “The preventive programmes in place in the region have yielded positive results in other states but haven’t shown similar results in the Northeast. HIV infection is going down but the last mile is always a challenge,” an official told Hindustan Times in January on the condition of anonymity.
Apart from IDUs, female sex workers (FSWs) and men who have sex with men are the groups with high HIV prevalence. At one site in Aizawl district, the figure for FSWs stood at 24.68%, compared with 1.6% for other sites in India, as per data from National Aids Control Organisation’s HIV Sentinel Surveillance 2017.
In the case of pregnant women visiting ante-natal clinics, six centres in Mizoram, two in Meghalaya and one in Tripura found HIV prevalence of over 1%. In other places in the country the figure stands at 0.28%.
“We need prevention and intervention strategies for the most-at-risk population in these pockets, with good coverage,” The Hindu quoted Samiran Panda, director of the National AIDS Research Institute, as saying. He added that nearly 12.28 lakh people are covered under the antiretroviral treatment (ART) and the aim is to bring 90% of the 21 lakh people living with HIV infection in the country under ART.