Global commitments to fight AIDS falling short

There is little chance of beginning to control the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015, without significant financial commitments from international donors, a new report has found.

Global commitments to fight HIV/AIDS are falling short of the amount needed to meet the World Bank's goal of reversing the epidemic's spread by 2015, according to a joint report by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

The report reviewed the current status of the global fight against HIV/AIDS and the prospects for achieving the Millennium
Development Goal (MDG), which includes to "have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS".

Despite an increase in initiatives responding to this call, financial commitments from the international donor community "have not kept pace with the rising demands" of the epidemic, the report said.

A review of global HIV/AIDS related spending estimated that at least US $3.2 billion was needed in 2002 to curb the spread of HIV/AIDS in developing countries. But far less was available, with an estimated gap of nearly US $1.5 to 2 billion in 2002.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has estimated that between $7 to $10 billion per year would be needed to fight the epidemic.

But fighting HIV/AIDS would also require more than monetary donations, the report said. Resources and stakeholders had to be mobilised from "the village to the national level" to provide antiretroviral drugs and HIV/AIDS education, it noted.

"Few developing countries today have in place the systems, incentives, and mechanisms to support an adequate response...This is one reason that the substantial investments to date have produced few lasting results against the epidemic," the report said.

In light of the many demands that countries and donors were facing, it was important to determine how far ministers of finance were willing to go with their own resources, the report concluded.

For more information: www.worldbank.org/springmeetings