Anti-AIDS steps not enough to meet threat

United Nations, May 31 (UNI) In the most comprehensive report so far on the world's progress in combating the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the main UN agency combating the disease, UNAIDS, says India currently has the largest number of people living with HIV/AIDS.

The date suggests it had surpassed South Africa (5.5 million) with 5.7 million infections.

The study, called ''Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic: A UNAIDS 10th Anniversary Special Edition'' came out on the eve of the 2006 high-level meeting on AIDS. A dozen heads of states, more than 100 Cabinet ministers and about 1,000 representatives of civil society and the private sector are here to attend the three-day meet that ends on June 2 at UN headquarters in New York, to discuss the findings.

''After a tragically late and slow start, the world's response has gathered strength, as we saw at the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS five years ago,'' Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in the preface to the 630-page report, which was produced by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. ''Since then, there has been remarkable progress in rallying political leadership, mobilising financial and technical resources, bringing antiretroviral treatment to people and even reversing the spread in some of the world's poorest nations.'' UNAIDS Executive Director Peter Piot says in his introduction, ''Even though the pandemic and its toll are outstripping the worst predictions, for the first time ever we have the will, means and knowledge needed to make real headway.'' He said, ''Goals that seemed impossible to achieve just five years ago have been realised. There is robust political commitment today. In 40 developing countries, the national AIDS response is now personally led by heads of government or their deputies.

Total financing for the response in developing countries rose fivefold between 2001 and 2005, reaching 8.3 billion dollars in the last year.'' Dr Piot said, ''In more and more countries in every continent, AIDS epidemics are declining, proving concretely that 'AIDS is a problem with a solution'. Thus, today the foundations exist for the world to mount a response commensurate with the challenge of stopping and reversing the pandemic.'' MORE UNI PR PC1724