India: Facts and Figures - HIV Estimates 2003

Globally, the HIV sentinel surveillance system has been recognised as an optimal mechanism to monitor trends of HIV infection in specific high-risk groups as well as low risk groups. In India, high-risk groups of population include patients attending STD clinics, MSM clinics and drug de-addiction centres while mothers attendingantenatal clinics are regarded as a proxy for the general population. The rationale of choosing sentinel sites in these clinics is that the samples from the respective risk groups, attending these clinic-based settings could be collected at regular intervals. The whole procedure is “Unlinked Anonymous”. The frequency of collection of samples is once every year, during August to October