HIV/AIDS cases in India ?

Question

what percentage pepole in india are infected with HIV/AIDS ?
Its at alrming stage in big cities like mumbai, delhi, chennai, etc. i have spoken with pepole working on its prevention and gone through with the analysis and there annual reports.

what is going to be in the future, lets say in 5 years or in 10 years

Aiso can somebody tell me why govt. of India is under-estimating the disease and coming up with the figures as low as ten thousand new infections in one year in a country of more than 1 billion pepole with such a young population and sexually active and deprive population. This way pepole don"t realize the magnitude of the problem and by the time real figure comes it will be too late ?
I am confident all the figures available are under-estimation of numbers.This is bad and right steps should be taken at this time to prevent its further spread.
How many of you agree ?
Any idea how many pepole are infected with HIV/AIDS in INDIA today ?
what should be done to prevent its further spread ?
What abput ARV drugs ? they are still unaffordable and available free in few selected govt. hospitals

Answer 1

According to USAID there are 4.5 million people with confirmed HIV infections in India. That puts the infection rate at 0.8% of adults, but obvioulsy that number is a lowball. Many high traffic areas have significantly higher rates, and it's also very likely that many infected individuals do not get tested. The trend is already shifting towards women, indicating a incresing role of heterosexual sex transmission.

Obviously it's a political liability and an economic liability to admit you have a relatively unnoticed epidemic on your hands. But India isn't the first country to downplay this problem. The question is what can you do to stem the tide?

Answer 2

1

Answer 3

well i think that peole should be careful

Answer 4

Not really very much.




An infectious epidemic is typically diagnosed by scientists and non-scientists by a sudden increase in morbidity and mortality of a population. As a result the affected population declines significantly, and a relatively immune population emerges. The most readable modern description of such an epidemic is Albert Camus' "The Plague".

Roy Anderson, professor of zoology at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases in Oxford, UK, provides a recent scientific description in a piece entitled "The spread of HIV and sexual mixing patterns" (Anderson, 1996). According to Anderson, "The historical and epidemiological literature abounds with accounts of infectious diseases invading human communities and of their impact on social organization and historical events. We typically think of a new epidemic in a "virgin" population as something that arises suddenly, sweeps through the population in a few months, and then wanes and disappears. Indeed, the classical epidemic curve for many respiratory or intestinal tract viral and bacterial infections is bell-shaped, with an overall duration of a few months to a year or so. The 1665 plague in London, believed to have killed about one-third of the population in a few months."

The seasonal poliomyelitis epidemics from the days prior to the polio vaccine, and the ever new, seasonal flu epidemics are specific modern examples of viral epidemics.

All of these viral and microbial epidemics have the following in common:
(i)

They rise exponentially and then decline within weeks or months as originally described by William Farr in the early 19th century (Bregman & Langmuir, 1990). The rise reflects the exponential spread of contagion and the fall reflects the resulting natural vaccination or immunity of survivors.

(ii) The epidemics spread randomly ("heterosexually" in the words of AIDS researchers) in the population.

(iii) The resulting infectious diseases are highly specific reflecting the limited genetic information of the causative microbe. As a consequence the viral diseases are typically more specific than those caused by the more complex bacteria or fungi. It is for this reason that the viruses and microbes are typically named for the specific disease they cause. For example influenza virus is called after the flu, polio virus after the poliomyelitis, and hepatitis virus after the liver disease it causes

(iv) The microbial and particularly the viral epidemics are self-limiting and thus typically seasonal, because they induce anti-microbial and viral immunity and select also for genetically resistant hosts..

By contrast, the following are characteristics of diseases caused by non-contagious, chemical or physical factors:
(i)

They follow no specific time course, but one that is determined by the dose and duration of exposure to the toxin.

(ii) They spread according to consumption or exposure to toxic agents, but not exponentially.

(iii) They spread either non-randomly with occupational or lifestyle factors, or randomly with environmental or nutritional factors.

(iv) They range from relatively specific to unspecific depending on the nature of the toxin.

(v) They are limited by discontinuation of intoxication, but not self-limiting because they do not generate immunity.

For example, the American pellagra epidemic of the rural South in the early decades of the 20th century lasted for decades and no immunity emerged, until a vitamin B rich diet proved to be the cure. And it did not spread to the industrial North which had a diet rich in Vitamin B.
Similarly the rather unspecific American epidemic of lung cancer-emphysema-heart disease-etc. rose steadily, not exponentially, in the 1950s and has lasted now for over 50 years without evidence for immunity.
It did not spread randomly in the population but was restricted to smokers. And it is now slowly coming down as smoking slowly declines (Greenlee et al.,2000).

Likewise the American and European AIDS epidemics:
(i)

rose steadily, not exponentially,

(ii) were completely non-randomly biased 85% in favor of males,

(iii) have followed first the over-use of recreational drugs, and then the extensive use of anti-AIDS-viral drugs (Duesberg & Rasnick, 1998),

(iv) do not manifest in one or even just a few specific diseases typical of microbial epidemics,

(v) do not spread to the general non-drug using population.

AIDS manifests in a bewildering spectrum of 30 non-specific, heterogeneous diseases.
This is consistent with the heterogeneity of the causative toxins.
There is no evidence for AIDS-immunity in 18 years, but the American/European AIDS epidemics are now coming down slowly as fewer people use recreational drugs
(Duesberg & Rasnick, 1998).

The above summary indicates that American and European AIDS epidemics exhibit the characteristics of diseases caused by non-contagious, chemical or physical factors NOT viruses.


According to the WHO's Weekly Epidemiological Records,
the whole continent of Africa has generated between 1991 and 1999 a rather steady yield of 60,000 to 90,000 AIDS cases annually, on average about 75,000 (WHO's Weekly Epidemiological Records since 1991).

Based on the last available data from South Africa, 8,976 cases were reported there between 1994 and 1996 by the WHO, corresponding to about 4,500 cases per year (WHO's Weekly Epidemiological Records 1998 and 1995).
The WHO does not report how many of these cases are deaths, how many survive with, and how many recover from AIDS.

However, it is evident from the WHO data that the African AIDS epidemic is not following the bell-shaped curve of an exponential rise and subsequent sharp drop with immunity, that are typical of infectious epidemics. Instead it drags on like a nutritionally or environmentally caused disease (Seligmann et al., 1984), that steadily affects, what appears to be only a very small percentage of the African population.

Given a current African population of 616 million (United Nations Environment Programme, June 15, 2000), and an average of 75,000 African AIDS cases per year, it follows that only 0.012% of the African population is annually suffering or dying from AIDS. Likewise only 0.01% of the South African population was suffering from AIDS between 1994 and 1996, based on the 4,500 annual cases and a population of approximately 44 million (US Agency for International Development, "HIV/AIDS in the developing World", May 1999). This means that the new African AIDS epidemic only represents a very small fraction of normal African mortality.

Based on a current average life expectancy for Africa of about 50 years (US Agency for International Development, "HIV/AIDS in the developing World", May 1999), the annual mortality of 616 million people is 12.3 million. Thus even if we assume that all AIDS cases reported by the WHO are deaths, the African AIDS epidemic represents only 75,000 out of 12,300,000 deaths per year, or 0.6% of all African mortality. Thus African AIDS is certainly not one of the historical microbial epidemics described by Camus in The Plague and others.

Instead it drags on like a nutritionally or environmentally caused disease (Seligmann et al., 1984), that steadily affects, what appears to be only a very small percentage of the African population.

The main issue in the afflicted countries as you say is the lack of clean water and food and standard medicine (especially antibiotics), sometimes coupled with civil war.

In African countries, they dont even spend money on AIDS testing for people that are sick from the same diseases that have plagued Africa for centuries. They just call it AIDS.

According to the WHO's Bangui definition of AIDS (Widy-Wirski et al., 1988; Fiala, 1998) and the "Anonymous AIDS Notification" forms of the South African Department of Health, African AIDS is not a specific clinical disease, but a battery of previously known and thus totally unspecific diseases, for example:
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
(iv)
(v)
(vi)
(vi)
(vii)
(viii)
(ix)
"weight loss over 10%,
chronic diarrhea for more than a month,
fever for more than a month,
persistent cough,
generalized pruritic dermatitis,
recurrent herpes zoster (shingles),
candidiasis oral and pharyngeal,
chronic or persistent herpes,
cryptococcal meningitis,
Kaposi's sarcoma"

Since these diseases include the most common diseases in Africa and in much of the rest of the world, it is impossible to distinguish clinically African AIDS diseases from previously known, and concurrently diagnosed, conventional African diseases. Thus African AIDS is clinically unspecific, unlike microbial diseases, but just like some nutritionally and chemically caused diseases.

The same is true if we try to determine the effect of the presumably new African AIDS epidemic on the current growth rates of Africa. The annual population growth rates of Africa have been between 2.4 and 2.8% per year since 1960 based on the American Agency for International Development & the U.S. Census Bureau's "HIV/AIDS in the Developing World" (U.S. Agency for International Development & U.S. Census Bureau, Feb. & May 1999) and the United Nations' "African population Database Documentation" (United Nations Environment Programme, June 15, 2000).

As a result of the high African growth rates, the population of the whole African continent has grown from 274 million in 1960, to 356 million in 1970, to 469 million in 1980, and to 616 million in 1990 (United Nations Environment Programme, June 15, 2000). By comparison the annual growth rate of the US is only 1% and that of Europe is only 0.5% (USAID, Feb. & May 1999).

Because of the numerical discrepancy between the relatively high African growth rates (2.4 to 2.8%) and the small annual deficits of these growth rates to be expected from AIDS mortality (0.6%), an African AIDS epidemic can not be identified or confirmed based on its effect on the high African growth rates.


Moreover, although the 23 million "estimated" HIV-antibody positives are said to be "living with HIV/AIDS" by the WHO, the agency does not offer any evidence for morbidity or mortality exceeding the modest numbers, ie. about 75,000 cases annually, reported by the it's Weekly Epidemiological Records

The agency's estimates of HIV-positives are indeed just "estimates", because according to the 1985-Bangui definition of African AIDS as well as to the current "Anonymous AIDS Notification" forms of the South African Department of Health - no HIV tests are required for an AIDS diagnosis (Widy-Wirski et al., 1988; Fiala, 1998).

A good example of the difference between estimates of AIDS/HIV and reality is shown by this article.

UNICEF DHS IN SWAZILAND

MBABANE, 27 August (PLUSNEWS) - A dramatically lower number of Swazi teenage girls are being infected by HIV than was previously estimated, suggesting a turning point in the battle against HIV/AIDS in a country with the world's highest HIV infection rates.

The findings in the report, 'A Baseline Study on HIV Risk Factors', commissioned by the UN Childrens' Fund (UNICEF) are derived from interviews and blood tests of over 1,000 Swazis in two rural areas and revealed that only six percent of girls aged from 15 to 19 were found to be HIV-positive, with most of the HIV infections occurring among older girls.

"This is the first time we have had data from a scientifically accurate survey of randomly selected households. It confirms some trends we had suspected, but which were belied by previous HIV estimates," said Dr Alan Brody, country representative for UNICEF.

"This is different from anything that has been seen before. The conventional wisdom is that many more girls were infected," he told PlusNews.

The study was prompted by the results of the government's 2002 sero-surveillance study, which estimated that 32.5 percent of teenage girls between the ages of 15 and 19 were HIV-positive.

http://www.plusnews.org/aidsreport.asp?r...



INDIAN REDUCTION IN HIV FIGURES NO MIRACLE NEW DELHI (AP) - India, home to the second largest number of people infected with the HIV virus, dropped a bombshell last week when it declared that new cases fell by 95 percent in just a year. As it http://www.outinamerica.com/home/news.as...


It is very well documented that when researchers switch from an ANC (Ante-Natal Clinic) survey, to a DHS (Demographic and Health Survey), that 'infection rates', or rather the number of people 'testing positive' drops dramatically.


You still have to remember that these surveys still try to extrapolate the data over the whole country. The big difference between ANCs and DHS's, is that ANC surveys are based only on pregnant women at antenatal clinics. The girls in the DHS survey, are ordinary teenaged girls.

Moreover, pregnant women will test positive at the drop of a hat, on a host of tests. Maybe there is something about having 2 immune systems, or the hormones that are released, or just their higher sexual activity, that creates the conditions for false positive tests.


I hope this helps you.