Forty years after the first case: The uneven geography of India's HIV success.

Authors

Bejo Jacob Raju, Sachu R Sunny

Published in

International journal of STD & AIDS. Pages 9564624261487929. Sep 08, 2026. Epub Sep 08, 2026.

Abstract

BackgroundAs India marks four decades since its first identified HIV case, national indicators tell a story of remarkable success: prevalence, incidence and HIV-related mortality have fallen since the peak of the epidemic. Yet this aggregate picture obscures a quieter and more troubling shift - the epidemic that the National AIDS Control Programme was built to fight is not the epidemic it now faces.Key concernsThe residual burden increasingly reveals populations, places and gaps in care that national figures can mask: pregnant and breastfeeding women who acquire HIV after an initial negative antenatal test, States recording rising mortality despite substantial national declines, and people reaching antiretroviral therapy centres only after advanced immunosuppression. Drawing on the Technical Report released by the Government of India (2024) on HIV estimation and recent peer-reviewed evidence, this opinion piece argues that India's HIV response risks mistaking a slowing epidemic for a defeated one.ConclusionFour decades after the first identified case, India's next HIV response must be built around the epidemic it faces today, not the one that shaped the architecture of the national HIV programme in 1992.

PMID:
42709048
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 08 Sep 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.