Forty percent of Indian women don't know about AIDS

Posted By Prerna Mankad Monday, February 26, 2007 - 10:32 AM Share

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A government survey has found that over 40 percent of women in India have never heard of AIDS. In a country where 5.7 million people live with HIV/AIDS, according to the United Nations, that's bad news. Activists blame poor awareness for the spread of the disease, particularly among women.

Perhaps there is some good news about AIDS in India, though. A recent study in the Guntar district of Andhra Pradesh, the state with the highest HIV rate in India, found that the government's estimation of the number of HIV-infected people was highly inflated. The researchers found that the real figure was less than half of what the government believed. However, the U.N. has warned against drawing "hasty conclusions" and generalizing the findings to the entire country. Either way, it doesn't help women to be in the dark about HIV/AIDS, especially with the growing "feminization" of the disease in India. Women now account for almost 40 percent of those infected with the disease in India. Sadly, this new survey on women's awareness of AIDS also highlights that not only is wealth in the country failing to trickle down, so is information that can save lives.

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