The teams are being tested on their awareness of the makes, varieties and usage of condoms.

The participants are sex workers in Chennai, capital of southern Tamil Nadu state where India's first AIDS case was reported in 1986, and the quiz is being conducted by an NGO using novel initiatives to increase awareness of HIV-AIDS.

Community Health Education Service, an NGO, in Chennai which cares for the AIDS-affected and works with high-risk groups has found the "play-way" method of big help in communicating with sex workers, says founder Dr. P. Manorama.

"Seeing is believing", says Manorama.

"We draw two lines in ink -- one washable, the other permanent. We demonstrate that though they look alike, they are intrinsically different.

"The moral: Any person can look healthy. Only tests will reveal infection. The message: Practice universal precaution. The sex workers get the point."

India has the largest number of people living with HIV/AIDS, according to UNAIDS, the United Nations AIDS agency, with 5.7 million people infected.

But hopes were fired that India was making progress in tackling the disease by an Indo-Canadian study in the medical journal Lancet earlier this year.

It reported a drop of over a third in the HIV virus prevalance among 15- to 24-year-olds in the southern states of Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

These states are home to 75 percent of people living with HIV in India and have been the main targets of the country's anti-AIDS efforts.

The government-run AIDS Control Society, which has an annual budget of 30 million rupees, has been at the forefront of the battle in Tamil Nadu.

"You see billboards, handouts, posters, everywhere," says Supriya Sahu, project director of the society.

The society now has 96 "sentinel surveillance" sites covering the entire range of high-risk areas including commercial sex workers and intravenous drug users as well as antenatal clinics.

Sahu says that "the prevalence rate is definitely coming down."

Among pregnant women, for instance, the mean prevalence rate fell to 0.55 percent in 2005, the latest year for which figures are available, from 0.63 percent a year earlier. "This compares with a nationwide adult prevalence rate of slightly under one percent," Sahu says.

Subhasree Raghavan, a doctor and founder of the NGO Solidarity and Action Against The HIV Infection in India, says its research "matches with the government figures especially as far as pregnant women are concerned".

But now a new Lancet study published in August has questioned how reliable any statistics gathered through antenatal and sexually transmitted disease clinics can be.

"HIV prevalence as measured through surveillance of antenatal and sexually transmitted disease clinics is the chief source of information on HIV in India, but these data cannot provide real insight into where transmission is occurring or guide programme strategy," the journal says.

Joe Thomas, Policy and Programme Advisor for US-based FXB International, which has 87 programs in 17 countries to support children whose families have been hit by AIDS, says "a lot is hidden behind" Indian government figures.

"The accuracy level (for data collection) could be improved. The (AIDS) numbers are a controversial issue. Methodology can be improved only if you focus on districts which will give a more clear picture of the Indian situation," he said.

He points to figures showing prevalance of more than five percent in districts and national figures showing prevelance less than one percent.

"The denomination for counting HIV prevalance in India should be shifted to districts rather than the states," Thomas told AFP.

AIDS campaigners say there is massive under-reporting of HIV infections in India due to the social stigma facing sufferers, lack of available treatment and ignorance about the illness.

The number of people living with HIV-AIDS is a highly political topic, AIDS campaigners add, especially in light of a recent UN study warning that India's booming economy could suffer a setback if the country does not check the disease's spread.

Sunil George, an AIDS campaigner in high-tech centre Bangalore, one of the high-prevalence cities, said researchers need to look into social factors fuelling the disease.

"The government data is only the tip of the iceberg. They (the government) are caught up in the numbers game. We need to get to the root issues such as poverty, gender discrimination and nutrition," he said.

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