KOCHI: As yet another AIDS Day passed off with rallies, candle light oaths and awareness exhibitions, the disease continues to pose new challenges to policy makers and health officials. One such looming threat in Kerala is the presence of three southern states with high HIV/AIDS incidence and the increasing migration of Keralite youths to these states.“In Kerala we have identified a few core groups, including migrants, sex workers and homosexuals, as groups with high incidence of HIV. Through the years, especially since 2007, the number of new cases in these core groups has been declining in the state. But now a new trend is visible in the general category. The number of cases reported from these core groups and from the general category is almost on a par with each other. In this respect, one issue that could be a threat to the state is the largescale migration of our youth to three southern states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. All the three are high risk states,” says the district programme manager of District AIDS Prevention and Control Unit Binu E Punnachalil.In the general category, the use of infected syringes and similar instruments is one of the major reasons for HIV infection. This is especially true of Ernakulam district since the district, along with Kozhikode, has shown a five per cent increase in the incidence of HIV/AIDS infection among injection drug users. Ernakulam and Kozhikode are the only two districts which have been given the B tag by the National AIDS Control Society. The other 12 districts fall under the lower prevalence categories C and D. Kerala has a total of 40,000 estimated cases of HIV/AIDS. Of this, 17,000 have been identified. But since 2007 the total number of HIV/AIDS cases has been on a steady decline. In 2007, the total number of new cases was 2,970. This has declined to 2,748 in 2008, 2,592 in 2009 and 2,342 in 2010. In 2011, as of October the total number of new cases has declined to 1,836. “It is to be noted that during the same period the total number people on whom the tests were carried out is on the increase. Even in Ernakulam the numbers have gone down from 15-25 cases per month to 2-3,” Binu Punnachalil said.
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