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New Delhi: The Government on Friday claimed the number of people living with HIV/AIDS had reduced by 50 percent from last year.

“We have about 2.5 million people infected with HIV/AIDS," Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said in Delhi. The prevalence rate is about 0.36 percent, much less than the previous estimate of 0.9 per cent.

India was thought to have the world's biggest HIV-positive caseload with the government claiming that there were 5.2 million people infected and UNAIDS putting the figure at 5.7 million.

The new data will put India below South Africa and Nigeria in terms of number of people with HIV/AIDS. “Experts from India and round the world were consulted and after a lot of hard work and outstanding support from WHO, UNAIDS and other partners, we have been able to arrive at robust figure that all our experts feel is as correct an estimate as we can get,” said Ramadoss.

"In terms of human lives affected, the numbers are still large and worrying," said Ramadoss, who inaugurated the National AIDS Control Program III to stop the HIV epidemic in India by 2011.

The survey was released jointly by the UNAIDS, WHO and National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO). The new data is based on two studies: the sentinel surveillance, which was expanded to 1,122 sites from last year's 703 sites, and the National Family Health Survey-III, a population based survey.