SILCHAR: India’s National AIDS Control Programme has achieved a 50 per cent reduction in new infections over the last 10 years. Still, there are an estimated 2.1 million people living with HIV in India. 90 per cent of infections in India are sexually transmitted. PEPFAR (The US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) has invested $262 million since 2004 to support India’s National AIDS Control Programme. India is one of the largest beneficiaries of grants from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS. The United States is the largest donor to the Global Fund, providing approximately 30 per cent of the fund’s total contributions. According to the American Center E–Bulletin as emailed to The Sentinel, The United States, through PEPFAR, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Global Fund, work closely with the Government of India, academic institutions, civil society and the private sector to address the HIV epidemic in India. PEPFAR in India is implemented through the US Agency for International Development, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Labour. The technical priorities of PEPFAR in India investments are in HIV prevention and health systems strengthening, including laboratory and strategic information systems, and training for health care workers, the information from the American Centre says. The Government of India looks to the US Government as an important partner providing high–level technical collaboration in priority areas. Through PEPFAR, the US Government has piloted and evaluated numerous demonstration projects with local partners, which subsequently have been adopted and scaled up by the Government of India or the private sector. Lessons learned in successful India–US collaborations on mobile HIV testing, laboratory quality assurance, and care for children affected by AIDS, for example, are being integrated into India’s national guidelines, the E–Bulletin further adds. The US National Institutes of Health support a broad portfolio of basic, behavioural, clinical and translational research on HIV including HIV prevention among key populations. The lessons learned through these collaborations benefit India, the United States and the international community as a whole. In the north eastern states of Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram, HIV is assuming alarming proportion according to a joint survey of the New Delhi–based UN team which travelled to the region. The United Nations has engaged with the National Aids Control Organization (NACO) of India in an HIV and AIDS prevention and care programme. Despite all the preventive measures, the latest information is that adult HIV and AIDS prevalence rates in Manipur and Nagaland are 1.57 and 1.2 per cent respectively and well above the national average of 0.34 per cent, according to the Department of AIDS Control, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India. In comparison to other Indian States, the North East is less populated, but still there are some 1,00,000 people, who live with HIV and AIDS in the eight north eastern states. For the so–called high risk groups, numbers are alarming. In Manipur 19.8 per cent of injecting drug users are HIV positive as well as 10.4 per cent of men having sex with women. In Nagaland, 16.4 per cent of female sex workers are living with HIV and AIDS, all numbers well above national average. Although HIV prevalence has been decreasing since 2002 at national level, this has not translated into a similar decrease in the north east. During the joint mission by staff from Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), it has been found that the drug users, both male and female, now receive support through the United Nations to cope with their lives as drug users. A drug user is now a client of the first oral substitution treatment centre run by the Voluntary Health Association of Meghalaya. The Association has attended to some 150 clients, who since 2006 have received necessary medical treatment to treat their heroin addiction. This has helped them to lead a normal life. Along with medical treatment, they are also receiving psychosocial counselling. Quite alarming is that of the two lakh interjection drug users in the country, 50,800 people are from Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and Meghalaya. It has been held that along with the US aid, the Joint UN programme and other cooperating agencies should find out design and implement large scale programmes for the people of the region who are vulnerable to and need treatment of drug user and HIV. This will change the HIV scenario of north east for the better.