During the pandemic, while HIV diagnosis saw a hit, the health officer heading the HIV AIDS programme in Mumbai said their focus was on ensuring the HIV patients continue to get their treatment.

“With the lockdown, new diagnosis was less as people were reluctant to step out. There were transport issues, and our centres were turned into COVID facilities. All these factors led to people postponing the diagnosis and reaching out only in case of emergency,” said Dr Shrikala Acharya, the additional project director, MDACS.

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She said the focus was on treatment retention and achieving viral suppression in them. “Among our many efforts was to start home delivery facility of ART drugs to ensure HIV patients continue their treatment. During the pandemic, we did viral load testing among the 26,130 patients living with HIV and on treatment. Good news is that we found 95.6% of them virally suppressed,” said Dr Acharya.

Among those who were newly diagnosed, Dr Acharya said, 94.6 per cent had got it through unsafe sex. She said that 2.4 per cent of these cases were of transmission from infected mother to baby, 0.05 per cent was due to infected blood transfusion and 0.2 per cent was through infected needles or instruments.

As per the MDACS report, 36,674 people living with HIV AIDS are on lifelong ART [antiretroviral therapy] of which 82 per cent are on first line regimen, 11 per cent are on second line regimen. It says 507 individuals are on third line drugs.

With the lockdown easing off from July, the MDACS has begun awareness programmes. “We are focusing on digital awareness programmes and flash mobs. From December 1, we are also starting advocacy and screening campaigns at railway stations to normalise screening,” said Dr Acharya.

The MDACS is working towards eliminating mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis under a national goal. “We right now have 196 pregnant women on HIV. We have seen a downward trend of pregnant women testing positive for HIV,” said Dr Acharya.