PREVALENCE OF HIV INFECTION AMONG TUBERCULOSIS PATIENTS IN DELHI - A SENTINEL SURVEILLANCE STUDY*

Abstract

Summary: To determine the prevalence of H I V infection among newly diagnosed untreated tuberculosis patients in Delhi, serum specimens of about 400 patients between 15 and 45 years of age were collected from each of six randomly selected tuberculosis clinics of Delhi and screened by the ELISA test. Out of the total 2,361 specimens thus collected from six clinics, 16 (0.68%) were found to be positive for HIV-I antibodies. A l l the 16 H I V positives were among 1,409 males examined (1.14%), suggesting a h igher risk of H I V co-infection present among males suffering from tuberculosis. Among them, i l l i terates and those educated upto primary level were significantly more compared to those with middle and higher education. The other risk factors for HIV and tuberculosis co-infection were (i) heterosexual relations with mult iple partners, ( i i) intravenous drug abuse and ( i i i) concomitantly present sexually transmitted disease. Key Words: HIV/TR Co-infection. HIV stains of TB patients. Sentinel Surveillance of HIV/TB