The People Versus AIDS

At a historic UNGASS (UN General Assembly special session) in 2001, Kofi Annan declared war on AIDS. He did not intend this war to become permanent, for the "fight against AIDS" to become a fixture of global politics. Deadlines were set: universal access to treatment by 2010, a reversal of the epidemic by 2015. In early June, five years after UNGASS and twenty-five years after the first reported cases of the disease, world leaders reconvened to assess the state of this war, and despite significant progress in funding and treatment, many concluded that the UN's benchmark goals are quickly moving out of reach. "The epidemic that has inflicted the single greatest reversal in the history of human development...continues to outpace us," warned Annan at the close of UNGASS+5.

Yet there is some reason for optimism. Five years ago there was little internationally coordinated funding for AIDS, no alphabet soup of agencies dedicated to fighting it--no US PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), no WHO 3x5 (the World Health Organization's plan to treat 3 million people by 2005), no Global Fund. Big Pharma fiercely resisted price discounting and generic production of antiretrovirals; trade officials in wealthy nations agreed and also helped to stymie much-needed debt relief. In short, whole swaths of the developing world were left for dead.

This is no longer the case. Last year the world spent $8.3 billion on HIV/AIDS, up from a paltry $1.2 billion in 2000. The G-8 members have pledged $38 billion in debt relief to seventeen poor nations. These steps have produced results on the ground: WHO has put 1.3 million new people on life-saving medications at prices once thought impossible, and after the IMF canceled $5 billion of Zambia's debt, President Levy Mwanawasa announced free basic healthcare for all citizens.

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