AIDS may kill 11 mln in India over 20 years: Report

August 9, 2006

AIDS may kill 11 mln in India over 20 years: report

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - An HIV/AIDS epidemic may kill 11 million

people in India over the next 20 years, the Times of India reported

on Wednesday, citing official census figures.

Along with the 5 million children not born to women who died young

because of the virus, India's forecast 2026 population of 1.4

billion would be trimmed by 1.2 percent, the paper reported.

The United Nations AIDS agency (UNAIDS) says that 5.7 million

Indians live with the HIV virus, and that India has the world's

highest caseload, overtaking South Africa earlier this year.

" If we do not stop it (the AIDS epidemic) now, the fate of South

Africa will overtake us, " India's minister for local self-

government, Mani Shankar Aiyar, told a meeting of rural politicians

on Wednesday.

More than one of every nine South Africans in a population of 45

million are HIV-positive.

Indian officials have not accepted the UNAIDS figure for India and

continue to cite the Health Ministry's number of 5.2 million people

living with HIV/AIDS.

But anti-AIDS groups say the real figure is higher as the stigma

attached to the disease prevents some people from reporting their

status. Other deaths are not recorded as HIV-related in medical

records.

On Wednesday, government officials announced plans to rope in

thousands of rural politicians to spread the anti-AIDS message in

the countryside, where more than 60 percent of Indians live.

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