NEW DELHI. Nov 10: India has 3.5 million persons infected with the Aids-causing Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), according to the official estimates released yesterday by the National Aids Control Organisation (NACO), reports

NACO's working estimate, based on new calculations and recognised by International experts. will help government plan programmes and policies to arrest the rising HIV infections and provide care and support to the affected. JVR Prasada Rao. Additional Secretary in the Health Ministry and Chief of NACO, told reporters yesterday.

The estimate is based on data collected In October 1998 from 180 HIV sentinel surveillance sites set up mostly in medical colleges across the country.

The assumption and results of this exercise were presented at the Monitoring Aids Pandernis (MAP) meeting in Kuala Lumpur last month.

Using these assumption ad state-specific estimates of HIV infections. NACO has calculated that there are 2.97 million HIV infected people in the country, plus or minus 20 per cent.

This puts the number in the range of 2.3 million to 3.5 million in mid-1998, Rao said.

Five states — Maharashtra. Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh. Karnataka and Manipur — are high-prevalence areas.

Gujarat and West Bengal fall in the medium prevalence and the rest of the country low prevalence categories.