NEW DELHI: Treating all HIV-positive sufferers correctly to suppress the virus can scale back the transmission of the lethal virus and assist India to finish AIDS, mentioned Mumbai-based epidemiologist Ishwar Gilada.
“We will finish AIDS now as science has proven us the proof on the way to cease the unfold of HIV an infection and hold folks residing with HIV wholesome. If all folks can safe the complete vary of HIV mixture prevention, testing, remedy and care providers they want, then we will arrest the additional unfold of an infection together with serving to folks with HIV lead a wholesome and productive life. To finish AIDS, we have to be sure that nobody is excluded,” mentioned Gilada, President Emeritus on the fifteenth Nationwide Convention of the AIDS Society of India (ASICON 2024).
The 2-day fifteenth ASICON, being held in Kochi from March 22-24 is themed ‘Informs, Reforms and Transforms HIV-care’.
India has the second largest inhabitants on the planet with HIV. Out of the estimated 24.67 lakh folks residing with HIV in India, 16.80 lakhs are receiving lifesaving antiretroviral remedy, as per a Nationwide Aids Management Organisation (NACO) report 2023.
About 79 per cent of the 24.67 lakh folks know their HIV-positive standing, 86 per cent of those that know they’re optimistic are receiving antiretroviral remedy, and out of these receiving the remedy, 93 per cent are virally suppressed.
“Each individual with HIV who’s on remedy ought to get the viral load take a look at often as it is very important be sure that the individual is (and stays) virally suppressed, untransmittable, and wholesome,” mentioned Gilada, who was the primary individual to lift the alarm on HIV in India and established India’s first AIDS Clinic in JJ Hospital Mumbai in 1986.
