India is disputing claims that it has replaced South Africa as the country with the highest tally of people living with HIV/AIDS.
The executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Richard Feachem, said in Paris that the AIDS epidemic is out of control in India and alleged no serious steps are being taken to control it.
He conceded that official statistics still show India as second to South Africa, but Mr. Feachem alleged those figures are wrong. He said the epidemic is growing very rapidly in India.
The director of India's National AIDS Control Organization strongly disputed those remarks.
He said India is not ignoring the severity of the problem and said efforts to fight the disease are being "enormously scaled up." But he said the facts still show that South Africa has 5.3 million infected people as compared to 5.1 million in India.
Some information for this report provided by AFP.