Johannesburg - The new head of the United Nations AIDS
agency on Tuesday called for global spending on HIV/AIDS programmes
to be nearly doubled, but acknowledged that securing 25 billion
dollars in the current economic climate would 'not be easy.'
Speaking in Khayelitsha, a sprawling township outside Cape Town,
UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibe said: 'We cannot let the
economic crisis paralyze us.
'We cannot let down the 4 million people on treatment and millions
more in need today.'
Sidibe said 25 billion dollars was required to help countries
affected by the HIV pandemic reach their targets on universal access
to prevention and treatment by 2010.
The current shortfall was around 11.3 billion dollars, he said.
'It will not be easy to close this gap but it is achievable and
absolutely necessary if we are to accelerate the pace of the response
to the AIDS epidemic,' said Sidibe.
While affected countries could drum up one-third of the funding,
the international community would need to provide 17 billion dollars,
he said.
Some of that money would go towards strengthening health systems
in developing countries and shoring up the underfunded Global Fund to
fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Sub-Saharan Africa is the region most heavily affected by HIV
worldwide, accounting for two-thirds of all infections and three-
quarters of AIDS deaths in 2007. South Africa has the highest number
of HIV-positive people in the world, at around 5.7 million.
Khayelitsha was the first South African community to get a proper
treatment programme, when the French international medical charity
Doctors Without Borders began distributing life-prolonging anti-
retrovirals (ARVs) in the township in 2001.
UN member states in 2006 committed to taking extraordinary action
to move towards universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care
and support by 2010.
Meeting the targets would mean avoiding 1.3 million deaths and
around 2.6 million new infections in the next two years, Sibide said.
USA
Your Talkback on this Story