Stronger Commitment

Greater and more effective prevention, treatment and care efforts need to be brought to bear. During the year 2001, the resolve to do so became stronger than ever.

History was made when the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS in June 2001 set in place a framework for national and international accountability in the struggle against the epidemic. Each government pledged to pursue a series of many benchmark targets relating to prevention, care, support and treatment, impact alleviation, and children orphaned and made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS, as part of a comprehensive AIDS response. These targets include the following:

• To reduce HIV infection among 15-24-year-olds by 25% in the most affected countries by 2005 and, globally, by 2010;

• By 2005, to reduce the proportion of infants infected with HIV by 20%, and by 50% by 2010;

• By 2003, to develop national strategies to strengthen health-care systems and address factors affecting the provision of HIV-related drugs, including affordability and pricing. Also, to urgently make every effort to provide the highest attainable standard of treatment for HIV/AIDS, including antiretroviral therapy in a careful and monitored manner to reduce the risk of developing resistance;

• By 2003, to develop and, by 2005, implement national strategies to provide a supportive environment for orphans and children infected and affected by HIV/AIDS;

• By 2003, to have in place strategies that begin to address the factors that make individuals particularly vulnerable to HIV infection, including under-development, economic insecurity, poverty, lack of empowerment of women, lack of education, social exclusion, illiteracy, discrimination, lack of information and/or commodities for self-protection, and all types of sexual exploitation of women, girls and boys;

• By 2003, to develop multisectoral strategies to address the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic at the individual, family, community and national levels.

Increasingly, other stakeholders, including nongovernmental organizations and private companies worldwide, are making clear their determination to boost those efforts.

New resources are being marshalled to lift spending to the necessary levels, which UNAIDS estimates at US$7-10 billion per year in low- and middle-income countries. The global fund called for by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has attracted about US$1.5 billion in pledges. In addition, the World Bank plans major new loans in 2002 and 2003 for HIV/AIDS, with a grant equivalency of over US$400 million per year. All the while, more countries are boosting their national budget allocations towards AIDS responses. Several "least developed countries" have received, or are in line for, debt relief that could help them increase their spending on HIV/AIDS.

More private companies are also stepping up their efforts. Guiding some of their interventions is a new international code of conduct on AIDS and the workplace, which was ratified earlier this year by members of the International Labour Organization (the new, eighth cosponsoring organization of UNAIDS).

The challenge now is to build on the new-found commitment and convert it into sustained action -- both in the countries and regions already hard hit, and in those where the epidemic began later but is gathering steam.