Every village in Goa has HIV patient, says minister

Panaji, Aug 11: Goa does not have a single village unaffected with HIV, state Health Minister Laxmikant Parsekar said today.

"There are 15,000 people affected with HIV, which means that one per cent of people in the state are affected with it. There is not a single village in the state which has no person affected with HIV," Parsekar told the Legislative Assembly here. He was responding to a question tabled by BJP legislator Nilesh Cabral, about HIV cases in Goa.

However, the number of people affected with HIV has been gone down in the state, the minister said. The number of patients has decreased by almost half since 2009. "Right from 2003 till 2008, the state was recording around 1,000 cases annually. But since 2009, the number has gone down to about 550 annually," he told the House.

Various awareness measures taken up by the state government along with NGOs are showing results, he said. In 2012, 554 fresh cases were reported which came down to 532 new cases last year. This year till June, 246 fresh HIV cases were reported, he added.

PTI