India challenges UN agencies' estimates of HIV prevalence

This article argues the factuality of the UN agencies estimates of HIV prevalence in India. The Indian government challenged the estimates of HIV prevalence in the country made by various UN agencies by releasing its first "working estimate". In this paper, the figures collated by the National AIDS Control Organization (NACO), showed an HIV estimate that ranges from 2.3 to 3.5 million infections as of mid-1998 with 20% variability. The estimate of NACO is the same as that of the Joint UN Programme on AIDS and differs from the figures presented by the WHO and UN International Children's Emergency Fund. Moreover, the government is questioning how the UN agencies came up with their respective figures and found that poor reporting by states and lack of data from rural centers are the reason for faulty or inadequate figures.