Article first published as India keeping HIV+ Hopes Alive Worldwide on Technorati.
India – One of the strongest growing economies is the reason to smile for the HIV+ worldwide. Thanks to the country’s robust pharmaceutical sector, it’s producing very high quality and low cost generic drugs thereby catering to 200 nations across the globe.
As per Mr Michel Sidibe executive director for the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), India is catering to 86% AIDS affected people worldwide. 6.6 million positives have access to treatment today primarily due to India making available high quality and affordable anti – retroviral drugs. As a result the survival rates have improved vastly. Country itself has around 2.4 Million AIDS affected.
Sidibe who hails from Africa, which is one of the worst affected countries worldwide said with continued efforts, raised awareness and improved health care, there has been 33% drop in new infections as well as 12 fold increase in people living with HIV.
UN had a high level meet last month on HIV/AIDS, where world leaders committed themselves to “zero new infections, zero discrimination and zero deaths due to AIDS”.
Sidibe urged India not to buckle under the pressure from developed nations that want to use TRIPS (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) to patent HIV drugs that would eventually push up the costs, further he added that it won’t be rich who would be deprived but poor and needy of much needed treatment.
96% cost of AIDS treatment around the world is met through the donations.
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