AIDS: Blackwill says it’s not about numbers

On Thanksgiving, US ambassador Robert Blackwill chose ‘‘compassion’’ for AIDS victims as the theme of his discourse as o...

On Thanksgiving, US ambassador Robert Blackwill chose ‘‘compassion’’ for AIDS victims as the theme of his discourse as opposed to his earlier concerns like rising number of AIDS cases in India that caused a huge controversy a month back.

Even as the US embassy officials were circulating the controversial National Intelligence Council (NIC) report on HIV/AIDS numbers and Blackwill’s speech about 20 million HIV victims in India by 2010, Blackwill clarified that numbers are not the most important issue. The US ambassador did not react to the caustic rejoinder from the Health Ministry on his speech and denied that India is defensive about how fast the disease is progressing here.

‘‘The Prime Minister is not defensive about it, neither are the officials we have been communicating with. They all represent the Indian Government. I think there are far more important issues to deal with than getting embroiled in the debate about numbers,’’ Blackwill said.

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The NIC report, that was circulated while Blackwill was responding to queries about various aspects of tackling the disease, concludes that India and China are likely to generate the biggest number of people infected with AIDS by 2010. ‘‘Beyond 2010, HIV/AIDS will become an even more significant problem for China and India if the Government programmes prove ineffective and prevalence rates jump significantly,’’ the report says.

And while Blackwill talked about the compassion that he has witnessed amongst poor families for their kith and kin suffering from AIDS, embassy officials defended the NIC report.

‘‘Even if you say that the predictions have a 50 per cent margin of error, it would still mean over ten million HIV positive people in India. Would you say it is a small number,’’ said an embassy official while reacting to queries about why the US ambassador chose to quote from the report and what the basis of such predictions was.