India could have 5 million new HIV infections every year within three decades if the use of condoms does not increase, the World Bank said Friday.
In the latest evidence that India could be on the verge of a massive AIDS problem, the World Bank said that by 2033 HIV/AIDS could be the countrys biggest cause of death, outstripping other killers such as diarrheal diseases and childhood infections, according to the Banks press review Monday.
The projections are contained in a report which outlines the cost-effectiveness of different policy options for the Indian government, including providing AIDS drugs. The report demonstrated that if the use of condoms did not increase in India, there would be a rapid escalation in the number of new infections every year.
Under the World Bank projections, if the use of condoms remained at its current rate – which was 50 percent among sex workers – there would be more than 3 million new infections a year by 2013, rising to more than 5 million by 2033.
That would mean more people being infected in one year than the current total of infections so far since AIDS was first identified in India in 1987. However, if condom use increased to 70 percent, the number of new infections would stabilize at around one million a year.
Mead Over, a World Bank economist and one of the authors of the report, said condom use had increased rapidly during the 1990s in India, but had plateaued in recent years. – The difficulty in India is it is so fragmented and decentralized. In some states, it is hard to see how condom use will increase without changing the way of doing business, he said.
Peter Heywood, a World Bank health specialist and one of the studys authors, said that “Anti-retroviral therapy is not going to have a big impact on the course of the epidemic.” – What will have an impact, however, is the use of condoms and prevention, added he.
India has the largest number of people with HIV/AIDS outside South Africa and experts fear it could soon vault to the top of the global list. Knowledge about the illness is still scanty.
Meanwhile, The Economic Times of India adds that the study – titled HIV/AIDS Treatment and Prevention in India: Costs and Consequences of Policy Options – focuses on ways the government can provide sustainable antiretroviral therapy (ART) to the greatest number of people while avoiding dangerous pitfalls such as the development of drug-resistant strains of HIV and a surge in risky behavior by people who mistakenly assume the drugs are a cure for HIV/AIDS.
– India must accept the challenge of treatment, take advantage of its national wealth of pharmaceutical and public health expertise and of the proffered assistance of international agencies, according to J.V.R. Prasada Rao, secretary in the ministry of health and family welfare.
In the foreword to the study, he said: – Using these resources, India must extend a therapeutic hand to its AIDS patients. However, the official advises against the improper use of the medications which could have negative effects on the whole issue.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
