Sept 14, 2016: The statistics on the rising cases of HIV positive people in India are utterly alarming. India accounts for 2.1 million people infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) should be getting a cocktail of drugs to prolong their lives and reduce infections, but no more than 44 percent do, the Minister of Health told the Lok Sabha in April 2016.
According to IANS report, in India, the drug cocktail is given to patients with a count of less than 350 CD4 cells per mm3 of blood- CD4 cells are white blood cells, a count of which indicates the health of a person's immune system.
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The Health Ministry said 940,000 (70 per cent) of 1.3 million HIV-infected patients with a CD4 count less than 350 are on anti-retroviral therapy (ART). The situation is worse among children, with no more than 36 per cent getting ART, mentioned IANS report.
ART are the drugs which are given to the infected of HIV positive and help in reducing the growth of this virus. According to WHO, this drug has to be given to each patient irrespective of their WBC count and stage of the disease.
Infants and young children living with HIV have an exceptionally high risk of poor outcomes, with up to 52 per cent of children born and living with HIV dying before the age of two years in the absence of any intervention," said the WHO. "By five years of age, the risk of mortality and disease progression in the absence of treatment falls to rates similar to those of young adult." Children are the worst of recipients of this disease it passes to them from their mother's womb, reported IANS.
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Chandigarh has 146 percent of HIV-AIDS patients on ART- many of whom likely to be from the adjoining Haryana, the state with the lowest ratio of HIV population to ART centres, thus explaining the 146 percent figure- followed by Meghalaya with 82 per cent and Mizoram with 73 percent, according to 2016 government data.At the bottom is Tripura with 2 percent, preceded by Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh with 14 per cent.
More than 37 million live with AIDS — the syndrome due to HIV virus — across the world, a 10 percent increase from 2010. Globally, access to ART has increased 126 per cent over five years to 2015: 17 million more people are on ART compared to 2010.
– prepared by Ayushi Gaur of Newsgram