National AIDS Control Programme

India's national programme to control the spread of HIV/AIDS, launched by the Government of India in 1992 and implemented in successive phases by the National AIDS Control Organisation, created that year within the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Early phases focused on blood safety, surveillance and targeted interventions with high-risk groups such as sex workers and people who inject drugs; from 2004 the programme began providing free antiretroviral therapy through government treatment centers. India's adult HIV prevalence, projected to reach alarming levels in the 1990s, instead fell substantially from its peak, and new annual infections declined considerably over the programme's first three decades, developments researchers and the government have credited to sustained targeted prevention and expanding treatment access, alongside continuing gaps in reaching some marginalized populations.