New Delhi: In what experts term as the "best news on AIDS for India," an Indo-Canadian team of scientists has come up with the first definitive evidence that the AIDS epidemic is on a gradual decline in South India.
The study published by medical journal Lancet says that HIV infections in the worst hit regions of India - Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have decreased by a third.
The four states are estimated to account for 75 percent of the 5.1 million HIV/AIDS cases in India, which is next highest after South Africa.
The 10-member team of researchers studied a sample of over 2.9 lakh women and 58,000 men attending 132 sexually transmitted infection (STI) clinics in the north and south from 2000 to 2004.
India's success in reducing new HIV infections in the southern states through awareness and condom-use campaigns could serve as a roadmap for other countries, says an Indo-Canadian expert.
The report also mentions that prevalance of HIV-1, the most common variant of the virus in the country has fallen from 1.7 per cent to 1.1 per cent in southern states, a relative reduction of 35 per cent.
Overall, the HIV prevalence rate in India is 1.6 percent of the population, with a lower estimated prevalence of 0.3 percent in most other parts of the country barring the northeast, where the incidence of HIV transmission due to drug abuse continues to be a cause of worry.
According to UNAIDS, WHO and Indian government's estimates, there are 5.1 million people infected with HIV with 75 per cent of them in the southern states.
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