A High-Level meeting on AIDS was held from 10 to 13 of June 2008 at the General Assembly in New York. 147 countries submitted their 2008 report to the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) in compliance with the 2001 Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS. The report indicates that progress has been achieved. Investments made in the AIDS response over the last 10 years are starting to bear fruit.

Dr. Peter Piot, Executive Director of UNAIDS, commended the UN Secretary-General on his report and highlighted the pressing need for stronger commitment to HIV prevention. "Every day, almost 7,000 people are needlessly infected with HIV because they do not have access to proven interventions to prevent transmission. It is time to act," he said.

The report of the Secretary-General is based on analysis of inputs from governments on national progress in response to HIV. An estimated 33.2 million people worldwide were found to be living with HIV as of December 2007. The annual rate of new HIV infections appears to have decreased over the last decade, with an estimated 2.5 million people newly infected with HIV in 2007 - down from 3.2 million in 1998. The annual number of AIDS deaths has declined from 3.9 million in 2001 to 2.1 million in 2007.

Although the rate of new infections has fallen globally, the number of people newly infected has increased in a number of countries including China, Indonesia, Russia and Ukraine, the European Union countries and North America. In fact, AIDS still kills more adults than all wars. There were 33 million people living with HIV in 2007. Sub-Saharan Africa is the most-affected region, where AIDS remains the leading cause of death.

The HIV figure in India has been exaggerated by many in the world who equate its worsening condition with sub-Saharan Africa. The Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight Aids said that the epidemic in India is spreading rapidly and nothing is being done to stop it. Richard Feachem warned that India has overtaken South Africa as the country with the most HIV positive patients. 2002 report by the CIA's National Intelligence Council predicted 20 million to 25 million AIDS cases in India by 2010 - more than any other country in the world. India's government responded by calling these figures "completely inaccurate," and accused those who cited them of "spreading panic." The government has also disputed predictions that India's epidemic is "on an African trajectory," although it claims to acknowledge the seriousness of the crisis.

India's worries are concentrated in six states - Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Manipur, Karnataka and Nagaland. There are 4.58 million people living with HIV/AIDS in India, says the National AIDS Control Organization (NACO). That's 0.8 per cent of the country's population, roughly one infected person in a group of 100.

Is HIV/AIDS as much of a threat to India as it is projected? WHO thinks it is unlikely that there will be a "heterosexual pandemic" in other countries outside Africa, where the situation remains just as grim. The operative difference between Africa and India is that in the former, the epidemic is likely to spread among the general population, while in the latter, only those people whose behaviour is 'high-risk' are likely to be affected.

There is a red alert in some of the areas in India as well. According to the NACO, one percent of women who are not sex workers but housewives belonging to the middle class are identified with HIV positive during the pregnancy test. In India, the infection is increasing the fastest in monogamous married women.

With HIV/AIDS epidemic expected to infect between 20 million and 25 million people by 2010, there is bound be to a visible impact on India's economy. The first attempt to measure the macro-economic impact of HIV/AIDS was recently done by the New Delhi-based National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER). The report states that if present HIV/AIDS trends continue, there will be a measurable slowdown in India's economy over the next 14 years.

The study found that the HIV/AIDS epidemic is likely to bring down the average annual growth rate during the 14-year period by one percent, accompanied by a reduction in per capita GDP. If AIDS continues to spread unchecked, health expenditure of households and the government will rise, which will reduce national savings, which, in turn, will have an adverse impact on investments. The decrease in investment will slow down growth, and hence, result in shrinking of labor demand. The low demand for labor could lead to high unemployment rates resulting in social unrest in a populous country like India.

In India, as elsewhere, AIDS is often seen as "someone else's problem" - as something that affects people living on the margins of society, whose lifestyles are considered immoral. The challenges India faces to overcome this epidemic are enormous. Yet India possesses in ample quantities all the resources needed to achieve universal access to HIV prevention and treatment. Therefore, it is unlikely to emerge as an epidemic in India.