India must get on top of its HIV epidemic by next year or risk seeing it spiral out of control, the man who controls the richest private anti-AIDS fund in the country and a senior United Nations official warned.
“The signs are still ominous,'' Ashok Alexander, the director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's $258-million Indian HIV-prevention project, told Reuters in an interview.
He said the rising prevalence of HIV in more than 100 districts in which the foundation operates showed that a decade of government efforts had not slowed the virus, which is now estimated to have infected 5.7 million Indians.
“The huge challenge is scaling up prevention efforts. 2007 is when we need to have done this by,'' added Alexander, who has repeatedly said India's epidemic is at a tipping point. “It's very urgent.''
[The New York Times]
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