HIV care policy in India: A review of social security schemes

Social protection schemes are available in India to mitigate the various challenges faced by people living with human immunodeficiency virus (PLWH) infection. The availability of the schemes should be uniform across the country and based on the rights of these people. We reviewed the schemes available in the high PLWH-burdened states of the country for the year 2019. We identified 83 social protection schemes for the PLWH in 13 representative states from different zones of India. The number of schemes was as low as two in the states of Mizoram and Telangana and 12 schemes in Rajasthan. Most of the schemes belong to the ‘health’ category (n = 26, 31.3%), nutrition (n = 14, 16.9%), financial aid (n = 12, 14.5%), insurance (n = 11, 13.5%), employment generation (n = 3, 3.6%), housing (n = 3, 3.6%), and legal support (n = 5, 6.0%). While health-related schemes are present in all the states, the distribution of the other social schemes varies widely across the states. The schemes commonly address the social safety of the children affected by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), nutritional supplementation, direct financial assistance or subsidized services, and employment generation but vary considerably regarding the type and the number of services. We strongly recommend for evidence-based policy decision to provide uniform social schemes for PLWH.