Knowing your HIV/AIDS epidemic and tailoring an effective response: how did India do it?

Abstract

Tremendous global efforts have been made to collect data on the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Yet, significant challenges remain for generating and analysing evidence to allocate resources efficiently and implement an effective AIDS response. India offers important lessons and a model for intelligent and integrated use of data on HIV/AIDS for an evidence-based response. Over the past 15 years, the number of data sources has expanded and the geographical unit of data generation, analysis and use for planning has shifted from the national to the state, district and now subdistrict level. The authors describe and critically analyse the evolution of data sets in India and how they have been utilised to better understand the epidemic, advance policy, and plan and implement an increasingly effective, well-targeted and decentralised national response to HIV and AIDS. The authors argue that India is an example of how ‘know your epidemic, know your response’ message can effectively be implemented at scale and presents important lessons to help other countries design their evidence generation systems.

Scale-up of a comprehensive harm reduction programme for people injecting opioids: lessons from north-eastern India

“…Historically, the states of Manipur and Nagaland have been prioritized for the development of programmes targeting people who inject illicit drugs. 7 Manipur and Nagaland are small states on India's mountainous, remote border with Myanmar, where illicit drugs are readily accessible. Both states have primarily rural populations characterized by ethnic, linguistic and tribal diversity.…”

Highlights from this issue

“…The need for adaptation of epidemic responses to local structural features is a constant theme of our Programme Science series, edited by Aral and Blanchard, which continues with with Sgaier and colleagues' exploration of India's HIV epidemic response 5. Their theme resonates throughout the journal, with an important article by Benzaken et al 6 demonstrating the value of a Situational Analysis of Sexual Health in assessing transmission potential the Brazilian Amazon.…”

Gender-Based Power and Couples’ HIV Risk in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, North India

“…Fewer HIV studies have focused on North India than on South India. 15 Uttar Pradesh has 199 million inhabitants and is India's most populous state; 16 only five countries in the world have larger populations. 17 Although the prevalence of HIV in Uttar Pradesh is low (0.07%), the state is considered “highly vulnerable” to HIV spread because of its poor performance on indicators of health, development and gender equity (e.g., women's education, age at marriage, gender-based violence).…”