NEW DELHI, India, Nov 30 (AFP) - Most of India's HIV-AIDS sufferers contracted the virus through unsafe sex, Health Minister Shatrughan Sinha said Saturday.
"India is the second largest country affected by AIDS with already four million patients, most of them being victims of unsafe sex," Sinha said in the western Indian city of Bombay.
"Nearly 85 percent of AIDS patients are victims of unsafe sex, four percent are victims of blood transfusion, five percent suffer due to the use of needles but the mode of transmission of the disease for remaining six percent is not yet known," Sinha said.
Sinha, a former Bollywood action star, was speaking two days after anti-AIDS activists flayed one of his cabinet colleagues for accusing Microsoft head Bill Gates of "overdoing it" in offering a 100-million-dollar grant to India to combat the spread of the disease.
Human Resources Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi turned up his nose at Gates' contribution this week, saying: "In his enthusiasm to fight out a certain menace, Gates has overdone it."
Gates announced the grant on a four-day visit to India last week in which he gave priority to a programme aimed at helping "mobile populations" such as truckers, migrants and labourers, who are especially vulnerable to HIV-AIDS.
Sinha has also accused Gates and the US ambassador here, Robert Blackwill, of "spreading panic" over HIV-AIDS for endorsing a study that predicted 20-25 million Indians would be infected by 2010.
India in March announced that some 3.97 million Indians are living with HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS, more than any country other than South Africa.
AIDS workers have often been accused by the government and media of "playing up numbers" to attract larger foreign funding.
The government counters that tuberculosis, which is a bigger killer than most diseases in India, is ignored at the cost of more "money-spinning causes" like AIDS.
021130
AF0211G6
Copyright © AFP or Agence France-Presse, 2002 - All Rights Reserved. AFP articles contained on the AEGiS web site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without AFP's prior written permission. You may make one copy of each article for your personal, non-commercial use only; more copies would require AFP's prior written permission.. http://www.afp.com/
AEGiS is made possible through unrestricted grants from Boehringer Ingelheim, the National Library of Medicine, and donations from users like you. Always watch for outdated information. This article first appeared in 2002. This material is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between you and your doctor.
©1990, 2002 - AEGiS. AEGiS presents published material, reprinted with permission and neither endorses nor opposes any material. All materials appearing on AEGiS are protected by copyright as a collective work or compilation under U.S. copyright and other laws and are the property of AEGiS, or the party credited as the provider of the content.
