World AIDS Day is observed every year on December 1 to create awareness about the symptoms, causes and preventives of the pandemic disease HIV/AIDS that has taken unprecedented number of lives around the globe. Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is a medical condition caused by Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) that sabotages the immune system of a person making it vulnerable to infections including opportunistic infections.
Hopefully, new HIV infection in India has remarkably declined during the past decade. According to UNAIDS Country Director for India Dr Bilali Camara, India has registered a 20 per cent annual decline in new infections over the past few years. However, he says, that is not good enough as the two million people living with HIV is too high a number.
The health experts are also apprehensive that India may miss the target of eliminating AIDS by 2030 as may patients are out of the ambit of proper treatment for the HIV infection due to lack of awareness and gender disparity. Reports say that discrimination in both government and private health centres and hospitals is widespread across the country.
Even though AIDS scenario across the country is seems to be declining , the North Eastern region of the country 63,000 people with HIV needs extra care.
Data reveals that Manipur has the highest HIV prevalence followed by Mizoram and Nagaland at 0.80 percent and 0.78 percent. Rising rising trends in adult HIV prevalence has been observed in Assam and Tripura.
It is time for the AIDS Control Societies and National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) to involve the civil society in a bigger way to eliminate the dreaded AIDS disease from the Northeastern region before 2030.