On HIV Prevalence and AIDS Deaths in India.

The National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) of India had estimated, before this year, that there were 5.134 million HIV positive people in India at the end of 2004 and that they were increasing at the rate of more than a quarter of a million people every year. In a recent publication, we estimated that, if the number of reported AIDS cases in India are only 50% efficient, i.e. if the number of actual AIDS cases in India is no more than twice the reported number, then the number of HIV positive people in India should have been no more than 2.5 million at the end of 2004. Many other people in the epidemiology community have the same point of view. Now, the government of India is also of the same view and “The latest data released by the government shows that the country has around 2 to 3 million people with HIV, much lower than last year's figure of 5.7 million”. However, our assumption that the actual number of AIDS cases in India is only about twice the number reported, has been questioned, and it has been suggested that the Indian system of AIDS reporting is woefully inaccurate and the actual number of AIDS cases there could be three, four or even five times the reported number. In this paper, we consider this suggestion and show that, even if the actual number of AIDS cases was three, four, or even five, times the reported number, the number of HIV positive people in India, at the end of 2004, should still be no more than 2.5 million. This is because our previous estimate was an over estimate and had room to accommodate considerably more number of AIDS cases. We also estimate the number of AIDS deaths in India and show that it should be considerably less than those estimated by the World Health Organisation (WHO). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]