Public Health
Facts & Stats
Treatment
Since the launch of the second phase of the National AIDS Control Program in 1999, the Indian government has established 25 community HIV/AIDS care centers across the country. But the standard of care that NACO supports is limited to the provision of drugs for the treatment of opportunistic infections. And the distribution of these drugs is limited to those institutions that qualify through a NACO state-level selection process.
Many people living with HIV only have access to centers not selected to receive drugs, so cannot have access to treatment for most opportunistic infections.50 Just as importantly, a major obstacle to the provision of care for HIV positive people, is the stigma surrounding the disease as described earlier. With regard to antiretroviral drugs, India is a major producer of cheap generic copies of many HIV/AIDS drugs that are being sold to many countries all over the world.
Despite that antiretroviral drugs are affordable to a tiny fraction of people in need of treatment in India. "It is a sad irony that India is one of the biggest producers of the drugs that have transformed the lives of people with AIDS in wealthy countries. But for millions of Indians, access to these medicines is a distant dream" - Joanne Csete, Director of the HIV/AIDS program at Human Rights Watch.