The World Bank and other agencies on Sunday suggested that now India needs to scale up prevention of HIV if it wants to avoid the increasing spending form its health budget on treatment of AIDS patients. New Delhi is revealed to spend about 5 percent of its $5.4 billion healthcare budget on treating AIDS patients.

HIV cases showing signs have reached an alarming figure in New Delhi, in the financial hub of Mumbai, in the north and the northeast, the cost of treatment in India could jump to $1.8 billion by 2020, about 7 percent of the total health expenditure.

Experts suggests that the current menace would impose a massive burden on the health care services and the budget in a country where malaria still kills hundreds of people every year and other health-sector challenges like non-communicable diseases are as sharp as AIDS.

The data reveals that more than 15 percent of the 200,000 along with injectable drug users (IDUs) are HIV positive in the country against a global average of 10 percent, "What we are worried about, are the concentrated epidemics in the country, among vulnerable groups in districts", said Mariam Claeson, World Bank Programme Coordinator (HIV/AIDS).