Street plays and awareness walks were among a slew of programmes that marked the 17th World AIDS Day Wednesday in the Indian capital, where over 25,000 people are said to be HIV positive.
Around 950 people have full-blown AIDS in Delhi, says the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO). In 1999, the city of 15 million had recorded just 359 AIDS cases.
This year, "Women, girls, HIV and AIDS" has been chosen as the theme for World AIDS Day, as an increasing number of women are now getting infected everywhere in the world.
"It is seen that women are more vulnerable than men, since they very often have no control over their sex lives," according to Poornima Mane, director of UNAIDS' Social Mobilisation and Information at Geneva, who was in Delhi last month to release a report.
"Besides, now the infection is particularly high in younger women because many of them are married to older men who pass on the infection to them."
India has an estimate of 5.1 million HIV infected people, the second highest after South Africa.
Delhi, which has less than five percent HIV prevalence and less than one percent prevalence among pregnant women, so far falls in the "low prevalence category".
But this is no reason for complacence, say experts.
Among various programmes held in Delhi to spread information about the disease was an "AIDS Awareness Run" at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium.
Over 8,000 school and college students and AIDS patients ran the three-kilometre trail around the stadium to spread awareness.
Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss, Sports Minister Sunil Dutt and Statistics Minister Oscar Fernandes also attended it.
A special street play was staged at the Dilli Haat grounds in south Delhi during the day.
The Church of North India had organised a programme with comedian Johny Lever at the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry to spread AIDS awareness among adolescents.
--Indo-Asian News Service