By IOL South Asia Correspondent

NEW DELHI, November 12 (IslamOnline) - Observers believe an unnecessary controversy around acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) can hamper efforts to cope with the epidemic in India, which has the second largest number of sufferers after South Africa.

There are close to four million HIV-infected people in the country, which in relation to the country’ s population, is a relatively small number, although it remains higher than those of some of the AIDS-devastated countries of Africa.

Though the disease is spreading fast, the National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) says the growth has been slower lately. Union Minister of Health Shatrughan Sinha too feels that there is not much to worry about on the AIDS front. He does not seem to be bothered about the extremely large (and growing) number of HIV-infected people.

U.S. ambassador Robert Blackwill, in a speech last week, showed concern over U.S. National Intelligence Council’s prediction that by 2010 HIV-infected cases in India would grow to 20-25 million if the spread remained unchecked. Even Indian health officials have been issuing warnings of an impending human catastrophe caused by AIDS.

Bill Gates, chief of software giant Microsoft, has expressed similar opinion, to which the actor-turned politician Shatrughan Sinha retorts that “ Gates and Blackwill are spreading panic.” This exactly is the sort of talk that comes from chief ministers of Indian states from whose area starvation deaths are reported too often.

This also has been the pattern of behavior among leaders of African countries devastated by AIDS. Even they used to pretend that AIDS was a figment of rich countries’ imagination. Through denial and self-deception they lost precious time to act before the disease spread became critical.

Bill Gates is in India with an offer of $100 million help from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to contain the spread of the disease. Yesterday, November 11, was the Bill Gates AIDS Control Day.

Bill Gates said here Monday, November 11, that the quantum of assistance from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation could be increased if the program showed results. With $24 billion, it is the world’s largest charity.

Showing concern, he said, “I believe that we have to do something just to control the spread of AIDS worldwide.” He feared people would ask 50 years later, “why we did nothing to control this terrible epidemic.”

The groups at risk like truck drivers, prostitutes, migrant laborers, and intravenous psychotropic drug users, who share needles, are more easily accessible to informal NGO activists than stiff-collared government officials. Hence, a large role for NGOs is assured in the fight against AIDS.

The Oil and Natural Gas Commission, the public sector oil company which earns the highest profit in public sector, has offered to plough a part of its huge earnings into a joint fund with Bill Gates AIDS control fund for India.

Already a U.N. initiative to contain the spread of HIV in north-east India has begun to take hold. One of the areas of HIV growth, north-east India has many drug addicts who share needles to inject each other with psychotropic drugs. The contaminated needles are a major source spreading disease here.

With the help of NGO volunteers, the UN runs a needle exchange program under which the drug addicts return the needles to volunteers in return for fresh, sterilized ones.

Distribution of condoms to high risk groups is yet another initiative. Volunteers at petrol pumps on highways connecting big cities try to explain to truckers the mortal risk they run by permissive sexual activity and persuade them to adopt safer sexual practices.

NGOs working in this area feel that a lot of women, who themselves are not prostitutes, drug users or sexually permissive, are at risk because their husbands are truckers or migrant workers and have got infected. Gender inequality makes them powerless spouses who cannot demand that their husbands use condoms.

Lack of awareness makes it easier for the groups and individuals at risk to get infected. It also prevents the affected people from seeking medical advice before they are down with full-blown AIDS. By then, it is too late for most people.