Associated Press - Monday November 11, 2002
Beth Duff-Brown, Associated Press Writer

"Coming to India is valuable to me for both business and personal reasons ... it's a place where I believe we can make substantive efforts to eradicate diseases and help develop the healthcare infrastructure in a way that benefits millions of people," Gates said in an interview with the Business Line newspaper.

Wearing the "tika," or red Hindu mark, on his forehead, Gates visited a nursing home for HIV-positive patients in New Delhi, where he sat cross-legged on a mattress on the floor with resident Navin Kumar, whose pregnant wife is also infected with the virus. Kumar said he and his wife had been neglected or turned away from government-run hospitals.

Gates has walked into a controversy in India over the scale of AIDS affliction. Government officials and health activists have rejected a U.S. National Intelligence Council report cited by him - that forecasts the number of HIV-infected people in India to rise to 20-25 million by 2010 from about 4 million now.

The Indian government has rejected the report. Health Minister Shatrughan Sinha on Friday described the projections to be "completely inaccurate."

The government has not given an alternate projection, but says it does not expect a dramatic increase in cases in 2010. The government claims its AIDS-prevention programs are paying off and the number of HIV/AIDS carriers has stabilized to between 3.5 million to 4 million - 0.7 percent of its adult population - over the last three years.

During his 4-day visit, Gates is expected to make business announcements and "a long-term, strategic commitment to support the country's efforts to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS," a statement from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said earlier.

Years of public awareness programs about safe sex and other preventive measures have had an impact in India. However, ignorance, social ostracization and inadequate medical care remain concerns for health activists and AIDS patients.

When Kumar's wife went for her delivery to a government hospital, "the hospital actually asked my wife to leave. They said it was useless to have the baby," he told Gates.

Kumar, who has been infected with the virus for three years, then searched for medicines for HIV-positive pregnant women on the Internet. Last week, when he was in pain, he returned to the hospital.

"They kept giving me morphine instead of trying to determine what the problem was," Kumar said.

Gates is likely to announce a major AIDS initiative later in the day. He is also scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and with industry leaders and other government officials in New Delhi, Bombay and the southern software hubs of Hyderabad and Bangalore.

"India's influence in the technology industry is clearly growing beyond its borders," Gates said in another interview, published in The Financial Express. "Several large system integrators used to outsource work to India, but now look to India for their strategic decision-making abilities."

In an article in The New York Times, published Saturday, Gates affirmed faith in India's competitiveness in information technology and wrote that the South Asian nation is "well on its way to becoming a global economic power."

However, much of this progress could be thwarted by AIDS, he wrote, quoting the U.S. government report.

It is a view that has been criticized by AIDS-prevention workers in India, who accused Gates of siding with a report that they say lacks evidence and may distort national policies.

"We would like Bill Gates to come with a panel of experts and assess the situation for himself instead of jumping to conclusions based on the NIC report," said Purushothaman Mulloli, a coordinator for JACKINDIA, an independent group monitoring HIV/AIDS trends in the country.

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