World 'losing fight against Aids: Advisor to President Bush

[Guest guest]

World 'losing fight against Aids'

Dr Fauci says there must be greater effort to boost prevention

US President W Bush's top adviser on HIV/Aids has said the world is

losing the battle against the virus. Dr Fauci told a conference in

Sydney that progress had been made, but more people were being infected with HIV

than were being treated. " For every one person that you put in therapy, six

new people get infected. So we're losing that game, the numbers game, " he said.

Dr Fauci was speaking at a gathering of the world's leading HIV/Aids experts.

Three years ago, fewer than 300,000 people in the developing world had access to

the anti-retroviral drugs that help treat the deadly virus. Last year, the

figure had risen to 2.2 million, but new infections continue to outpace the

global effort to treat and educate patients.

The HIV epidemic is essentially uncontrolled, uncontrolled in Africa,

uncontrolled completely in Asia right now

Dr Gazzard, British HIV Association " Although we are making major

improvements in the access to drugs, clearly prevention must be addressed in a

very forceful way, " said Dr Fauci, the director of the US National Institute of

Allergy and Infectious Diseases. But in many parts of the developing world,

effective prevention strategies like condoms and sterile syringes are available

to less than 15% of the population.

" The proven prevention modalities are not accessible to any substantial

proportion of the people who need them, " Dr Fauci said. Declaration plan Dr

Fauci's warning was echoed by Dr Gazzard, of the British HIV Association,

who said that while advances were being made in extending access to

anti-retroviral drugs, the disease was running out of control in parts of Asia

and Africa. " The HIV epidemic is essentially uncontrolled, uncontrolled in

Africa, uncontrolled completely in Asia right now, " he said. Only a quarter of

the people needing treatment were receiving it, meaning the other

three-quarters would continue to spread the epidemic, which was still in its

exponential growth stage, Dr Gazzard said.

The Australian conference's 5,000 delegates are drawn from more than 130

countries. Participants at the forum are being urged to sign a declaration,

aimed at boosting HIV research, which proposes that HIV programmes should devote

at least 10% of spending on research. The so-called Sydney Declaration's

central message is that governments need to dedicate more resources to HIV

research if the world is to effectively combat the Aids pandemic. The document

says this will help speed up the implementation of new drugs and technologies to

prevent, diagnose and treat an infection which has already killed 25 million

people.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6911736.stm

Vineeta Gupta. MD, JD, LL.M

Executive Director

Stop HIV/AIDS in India Initiative

Phone: 202-589-0808 Ext 229

www.shaii.org