India reported a rise in HIV infections in 2005 with more than 5.2 million people infected, the second largest number after South Africa

Reuters:

That was an increase of 72,000 from 2004, with high risk groups like prostitutes and homosexuals the biggest cause for concern, officials said.

Federal health secretary P.K. Hota said that with the increase, especially among high-risk groups, the government should push for legalising homosexuality and liberalising laws dealing with prostitution.

"We'll pursue those provisions of law that criminalise this behaviour, push people underground and dehumanise them further. We have to give them a voice and stop the dehumanisation," Hota told Reuters after an AIDS seminar.

But UNAIDS, the United Nations anti-AIDS agency, said pushing for changes in homosexuality and anti-prostitution laws could be difficult in conservative India where sex is not discussed openly by most people.

"The big problem is that politicians don't think there is much to gain by embracing the homosexual vote," Denis Broun, India's coordinator for UNAIDS, said.

The continued rise in infections overshadowed a rare glint of good news last month in an Indo-Canadian study published in the medical journal Lancet.

It reported a drop of more than a third in the prevalance of the HIV virus among 15 to 24-year-olds in the southern states of Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

These states, which are home to 75 percent of people living with HIV in India, have been the focus of the country's anti-AIDS efforts -- apparently with some success.

But northern states like Rajasthan, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Punjab, as well as eastern Orissa, are in danger of being lulled into complacency by their comparatively lower rates of infection, Broun said.

"A very low prevalance which is not tackled early can become a higher prevalance," he said. "At some point you wake up and say 'Oh dear I've got a problem on my hands which I should have tackled some years ago.'"

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