India has third highest number HIV-infected people globally

About 2.1 million Indian people are infected with the HIV disease, the third highest number in the world, according to a UN report released on Thursday. The report by the United Nations program on HIV/AIDS said that around 19 million out of the 35 million people infected with HIV across the world are unaware of their HIV+ status.

The report said that the plan to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030 will need massive scale-up as only it can help close the gap.

The UNAIDS report said that after sub-Saharan Africa, the largest number of people living with HIV are in Asia and the Pacific.

There were an estimated 4.8 million people living with HIV in this region in 2013. China, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam account for more than 90 percent of the people living with HIV in the region.

"India has the third largest number of people living with HIV in the world - 2.1 million at the end of 2013 - and accounts for about four out of 10 people living with HIV in the region," the report said.

The report added that in India, the coverage for HIV treatment is only 36 percent and the country records 51 percent of AIDS- related deaths.

The positive news, however, is that the numbers of new HIV infections dropped by 19 percent in India in 2013 but the nation still accounted for 38 percent of all new HIV infections in the region.