The southern Indian state has directed every college to hold HIV screening and counselling camps after a sharp rise in infections among young people
Karnataka, a state in southern India, has directed all government, aided and private colleges to hold HIV testing and counselling camps for students.
The order follows a report that more than 7,000 people aged 18 to 25 in the state have been diagnosed with HIV. The Karnataka State AIDS Prevention Society says the infection is spreading rapidly among people aged 18 to 35.
The camps will be run jointly by the prevention society, Visvesvaraya Technological University and the Collegiate Education Department, and will cover all engineering and degree colleges in the state.
The directive follows the Sankalak report on the status of the national AIDS and STD response, published by India’s National AIDS Control Organisation. It ranks Karnataka third in the country for the number of people living with HIV, behind Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.
The state currently has around 260,000 people living with the virus. About 205,000 of them are receiving antiretroviral therapy. An estimated 54,000 remain unaware of their status, which health officials have identified as the central obstacle to controlling transmission.
The number of recorded infections has risen sharply. The state prevention society reported a figure of 66,600 in 2025-26, against 44,500 in 2023-24.
Karnataka has run HIV prevention and treatment programmes for more than two decades, through integrated counselling and testing centres, antiretroviral therapy centres, sexually transmitted infection clinics and community outreach. The college camps extend that network directly onto campuses.
How the College HIV Screening Camps Will Work
The camps are being run as Integrated Health Camps and form part of the Mobilisation for AIDS Suraksha programme, which targets the elimination of HIV, Hepatitis B and syphilis transmission.
Each camp will offer confidential HIV testing along with pre-test and post-test counselling. Sessions on prevention, safe practices and the importance of regular health check-ups will run alongside the screening.
The camps are mandatory for colleges. Testing is not. No test or screening will be carried out without the individual’s consent.
A QR code system is being used to protect privacy. Students scan a code to access information and reach testing centres without having to identify themselves in front of peers. Anyone who tests positive will be referred into the state’s free antiretroviral therapy programme.
The health department plans to reach around 700,000 students in total, roughly 300,000 in degree colleges and 400,000 across institutions affiliated with Visvesvaraya Technological University. The drive will continue until February next year.
Beyond the camps themselves, colleges will host street plays, quizzes and interactive awareness sessions. Officials say these are aimed at correcting common misconceptions about how HIV is transmitted and at reducing the stigma that keeps people from being tested.
What Karnataka’s HIV Numbers Show About Early Detection
The 54,000 people unaware of their status are the reason for the campaign’s scale. Undiagnosed infection allows transmission to continue and delays treatment, and both effects compound over time.
Early detection changes both outcomes. People who are diagnosed and started on antiretroviral therapy can suppress the virus to undetectable levels, at which point it is not transmitted sexually. The state’s existing programme already has 205,000 people on treatment, so the infrastructure to absorb new diagnoses is in place.
The focus on the 18 to 25 age group reflects where the increase has been concentrated. Bringing testing onto campuses removes two of the barriers that keep young people away from clinics, which are cost and visibility.
Karnataka has separately run a public campaign urging residents to find out their status through voluntary testing, on the basis that identifying undiagnosed cases remains the single biggest challenge in controlling the epidemic.
The college programme runs through to February, which will give the state its first clear measure of how many undiagnosed infections were sitting inside that age group. Whether the approach is adopted elsewhere in India is likely to depend on those numbers.
