Think Again: AIDS

Two decades and billions of dollars into the fight against AIDS, the world still has a long way to go in arresting the epidemic. The cash that donor governments roll out with much fanfare won't make a dent so long as misperceptions persist about how we are winning and losing the battle against the disease.

BY TINA ROSENBERG | MARCH 1, 2005

"The World Now Recognizes the Severity of the AIDS Crisis"

No. For years, activists around the world have clamored for wealthy countries to offer greater financial help in the fight against AIDS. That help has started to arrive. In 2003, the world spent $4.7 billion to combat the epidemic in poor countries. The United Nations in 2002 helped create the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which will give out between $1.4 and $2 billion in 2005. The World Bank is now spending $1 billion to stem the epidemic in Africa. And, in his 2003 State of the Union Address, U.S. President George W. Bush announced a $15 billion, five-year initiative to increase prevention programs, care for AIDS orphans, and bring antiretroviral treatment to 14 of the world’s hardest-hit nations.

These sums, large as they are, would have been enough to staunch the AIDS epidemic in 1996, not 2005. In 1996, $4.7 billion would have provided new antiretroviral drugs for most people who needed them and paid for effective prevention campaigns so that AIDS might have been a minor disease today rather than a global catastrophe. That kind of spending would have been one of the most brilliant investments imaginable, eventually saving hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, of lives.

Unfortunately, the epidemic has not abated. Today’s spending is 15 times what it was in 1996, but it is insufficient to turn the course of AIDS today. In fact, it doesn't even tread water: The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) estimates that the developing world needs $12 billion in 2005 alone, which doesn't even include the billions required to build working healthcare systems in dozens of the poorest countries.

 SUBJECTS: AIDS, PUBLIC HEALTH
 

Tina Rosenberg is an editorial writer for the New York Times.