India HIV estimations 2017

The National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) released the report HIV Estimations 2017. The HIV Estimations 2017 is the 14th round in the series of HIV Estimations under National AIDS Control Programme (NACP). NACO undertakes HIV estimations biennially in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) - National Institute of Medical Statistics (NIMS). The first round of HIV estimation in India was done in 1998, while the last round was done in 2015. The report highlights the significant achievement of National AIDS response on prevention as well as on treatment front but has also indicated that there is no place for complacency as country move forward on ambitious goal of attaining the ‘End of AIDS’ by 2030. As per the report, in 2017, India had around 21.40 lakh people living with HIV (PLHIV) with adult prevalence of 0.22%. Around 87.58 thousand new HIV infections and 69.11 thousand AIDS related deaths happened in 2017 while around 22,675 mothers needed Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) for prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV. HIV Estimations 2017 corroborate the previous rounds in terms of characteristic of the HIV epidemic in India i.e. national prevalence and incidence remains low, but the epidemic is high in some geographical regions and population group. The report has noted that the rate of decline in annual new HIV infections has been relatively slower in recent years.