World's response to curbing HIV is inadequate, UN says

AIDS deaths rise despite calls for treatment * The AIDS pandemic is expected to increase until mid-century after spreading to China, Russia, India and other parts of Asia unless responses are accelerated. * 28 million people have died from AIDS to date out of the 65 million who have contracted the disease over 20 years. * More than 14 million children under the age of 15 have lost one or both parents to AIDS. This number is expected to increase to 24 million by 2010 Source: Reuters

The world's financial and political response to curbing the HIV/AIDS epidemic has been woefully inadequate, with many countries failing to achieve treatment and prevention goals set two years ago, a new report said.

As the UN General Assembly gathered yesterday to review progress since its 2001 special session on the disease, the report outlined shortfalls on numerous fronts, including expanding access to lifesaving drugs, caring for AIDS orphans, preventing discrimination and blunting mother-to-child trans-missions of the disease.

Without money and more political will, it is unlikely the goals of having 3 million HIV-positive people in the developing world taking AIDS drugs by 2005 and halting and reversing the epidemic by 2015 will be met, experts said.

The progress report was written by UNAIDS -- the agency responsible for coordinating global efforts to fight AIDS -- using information from 103 of the 189 countries that signed the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS adopted at the 2001 UN General Assembly special session.

There are only 300,000 people in the developing world with access to AIDS medication, although between 5 million and 6 million need it, the report said. Brazil, which has a widely heralded AIDS program, accounts for more than one-third of the patients in the developing countries who are receiving treatment. In sub-Saharan Africa, only an estimated 50,000 people receive medication when 4.1 million require it.

Experts there has been no slowdown in the progression of the disease, which affects 40 million people, about 29 million of them in Africa. If the response to the pandemic doesn't improve, UNAIDS estimates there will be 45 million new infections by 2010. China, India and Russia are among the countries where AIDS is rising rapidly.

"We are getting further and further behind because the demand for prevention and especially treatment for the disease is increasing faster than our resources," said Paul De Lay, director of monitoring and evaluation at UNAIDS.

De Lay said there were some glimmers of hope in the report. Ninety-three percent of the countries say they met the goal of developing a national AIDS strategy by this year.

Countries also supposed to have a strategy to provide care for HIV-affected individuals by this year, and 76 percent of countries had such policies in place.