India has half of Asia's HIV patients

India houses half of Asia's HIV patients and is on the list of 22 countries prioritized for preventing mother to child transmission infection, local daily The Hindu reported on Thursday. About 4.8 million people were living with HIV in Asia in 2010 and 49 percent of them were in India, the newspaper quoted the latest UN-AIDS report, jointly drafted with the UN Children's Fund and the World Health Organization, as saying. The report was released Wednesday on the eve of the World AIDS Day, which falls on Dec. 1 each year. The percentage of pregnant women who were tested positive for HIV infection in India has risen dramatically in the past five years, sounding alarm for taking prevention actions to protect the pregnant women. Some prevention programs against HIV/AIDS have achieved positive results in India, such as one in the southern Indian state of Karnataka where the HIV infection among sex workers has dropped from 25 percent to 13 percent from 2004 to 2009, said the report. In Mumbai, the HIV infection among sex workers has dropped from 45 percent to 13 percent from 2004 to 2010 due to prevention actions.