Kochi: India can end AIDS if all affected people secure the full range of HIV combination — prevention, testing, treatment and care services — and are given support to lead a healthy and productive life, said speakers at the 15th national conference of the AIDS Society of India (ASICON 2024) in Kochi. ‘Informs, Reforms and Transforms HIV-care’ is the theme of the three-day conference which began on Friday.
“We can end AIDS now as science has shown us the evidence on how to stop the spread of HIV infection and keep people living with HIV healthy. If all people can secure the full range of HIV combination, along with helping people with HIV lead a healthy and productive life, then we can arrest the further spread of infection. To end AIDS, we need to ensure that no one is excluded,” said Dr Ishwar Gilada, the first person to raise the alarm on HIV in India and established India’s first AIDS clinic in JJ Hospital Mumbai in 1986.
Of the estimated 24.67 lakh people living with HIV in India (second largest in the world), 16.80 lakh are receiving the lifesaving antiretroviral therapy (ART). As many as 1.06 lakh of the total receive it from the private sector. About 79 per cent of the 24.67 lakh people know their HIV positive status, 86 per cent of those who know they are positive are receiving ART and out of those receiving the therapy, 93 per cent are virally suppressed.
The conference brought together leaders in HIV medical care and science in India and beyond, who discussed what needs to be done to bring the risk of HIV transmission to zero. Experts said emphasis should be on identifying high-risk groups — transgenders, homosexuals — who don’t come out in the open due to fear of being stigmatised.
Therefore, experts said India should also introduce self-test HIV kits. In India, the annual new infections between 2010 and 2022 had declined by 42 per cent while annual AIDS-related deaths declined by 77 per cent. Globally, the annual new infections declined by 38 per cent and AIDS-related deaths declined by 51 per cent between the same period.
