New Delhi, July 26: Expressing serious concern over the prevalence of a large number of people afflicted with the dreaded HIV/AIDS disease, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee today lamented that public health issues are not finding their place on the political agenda in the country which should be reversed.
"In India, issues pertaining to public health do not normally find a place on the nation's political agenda. This is not so in other democracies where, sometimes, even elections are won or lost on the basis of health issues," he told top political leaders gathered at the inauguration of a two-day national convention of parliamentary forum on HIV/AIDS here.

Noting that over four million Indian men, women and children out of a total of seven million newly-infected adults and children across Asia and Pacific live with the virus, Vajpayee said in some states HIV prevalence has reached over one per cent among women attending antenatal clinics.

"It is obvious that political parties in our country need to pay far greater attention to issues of healthcare than they do now," he told a galaxy of political leaders which included Lok Sabha Speaker Manohar Joshi, Congress President Sonia Gandhi, several chief ministers, union ministers, MPs, state legislators and diplomats.
Maintaining that HIV/AIDS was not only a grave global challenge, he said it was equally a national concern, one that demanded effective and undelayed response.

Bureau Report