Shillong, Aug. 23: Northeastern states are showing a worrying trend of people living with HIV (PLHIV), even as those infected with the disease called for putting an end to discrimination against them, implement social integration and protection scheme, including for drug addicts who have been transformed.

At the review meeting on national AIDS control programme for the northeastern states that began here today, statistics related to the number of HIV patients, annual new HIV infections and estimated annual AIDS-related deaths in the Northeast were shared.

Sanjeeva Kumar, national AIDS Control Organisation (Naco) director-general and Union additional secretary (health and family welfare), state health officials and representatives from various state AIDS control societies in the Northeast attended the three-day review meeting which will conclude on Friday.

According to India HIV estimation (technical report) of 2016-17 for 2015, Manipur has shown the highest estimated adult (15-49 years) HIV prevalence of 1.15 per cent, followed by Mizoram (0.80 per cent), Nagaland (0.78 per cent), Arunachal Pradesh (0.07 per cent), Assam (0.06 per cent), Meghalaya (0.06 per cent), Sikkim (0.23 per cent) and Tripura (0.31 per cent).

A presentation on overview of HIV epidemic in the Northeast was also made by Naco (surveillance) programme officer Pradeep Kumar.

The report said the total number of HIV patients in India was 21,16,581, of which the number of HIV infection (PLHIV - adult and children) in the Northeast was 63,264 .

The estimated number of annual new HIV infection (15+ years) in the country was 75,948, and 3,250 in the Northeast.

The estimated number of annual AIDS-related deaths in the country was 67,612 and in the Northeast it was 2,080 in 2015.

While the number of people who need anti-retroviral therapy in the country was 12,70,678, in the Northeast it was 35,735.

In February last year, Union minister of health and family welfare J.P. Nadda had launched Project Sunrise for prevention of AIDS in the northeastern states especially among people injecting drugs, in addition to the existing Naco programmes.

The AIDS prevention special project aims to diagnose 90 per cent of such drug addicts with HIV, and put them under treatment by 2020.

Project Sunrise aims at bringing the people living with HIV/AIDS into the national mainstream and create more awareness about the disease in the region. The project has been sponsored by US-based Centre for Disease Control and is being implemented by Family Health International 360 (FHI 360).

The project will cover one lakh people living with HIV/AIDS by giving them free treatment and care facilities.

Giving a progress report about Project Sunrise, FHI 360 director Bitra George said 29 districts in the Northeast would be covered and the focus population included people who inject drugs, including females and spouses/partners.

He said the goal was to build institutional and human capacity to improve and scale-up the quality of comprehensive package of services for people who inject drugs in the Northeast.

Barry L. Kharmalki, who was into drugs but kicked the habit, also spoke at the meeting where he narrated miseries faced by people infected with HIV/AIDS and drug addicts, particularly stigma and discrimination in society.

Kharmalki who is helping reform other drug addicts as well, said, "The stigma is very high and we face discrimination in society."

Urging those at the helm of affairs to put in place policies that will help people living with HIV and drug addicts, Kharmalki said, "We need practical approaches to deal with the problem. If the government has nothing to offer to drug users after being reformed, they may relapse," Kharmalki said.

In his address, Naco director-general Sanjeeva Kumar stressed the need to address the problem faced by people living with HIV/AIDS and drug addicts in a different way.

"We need to optimise the resources and address the problem from the human rights perspective as well. If we try to address the problem only from the technical point of view, it would not be successful," Kumar said, while underlining the need to remove social stigma and discrimination, and empower the affected people by involving them in livelihood activities.