| WHO misses AIDS treatment target- still largely a Success |
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The UN health agency World Health Organization said yesterday that despite of the efforts to get antiviral drugs to people with the AIDS virus, it fell far short of its goal of 3 million people by the end of last year; however, it saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
Although, WHO’s so-called "3 by 5" AIDS strategy---3 million people on antiretroviral drugs by the end of 2005, did not achieve its goal to treat 3 million people with anti-retroviral drugs by the end of last year, UNAIDS experts say they are pleased with the results they have managed to achieve.
UN’s WHO and joint UNAIDS program say though they have failed to meet their target of providing anti-retroviral treatment to three million AIDS sufferers in poor countries by the end of 2005 still it is largely a success.
As per the progress report issued by WHO, the sum of HIV/AIDS treated people has jumped to 1.3 million from the 400,000 AIDS sufferers, already on the drugs when the drive was declared two years earlier. Director Ties Boerma of Health Information Systems and WHO Department of Measurement confirms the figure.
From the time the "3 by 5" program began two years ago, the World Health Organization informs access to HIV treatment has expanded in every region across the world. It says that at least half of the HIV/AIDS sufferers are getting the treatment from 18 developing countries. Estimated 250,000 to 350,000 deaths from AIDS have been avoided due to the treatment. WHO figures show that throughout the past two years the cost of the first-line treatment dropped as much as 53 percent.
New AIDS director at the WHO, Kevin De Cock said that "3 by 5 program" helped to set the foundation for the more desired target of coming as close as possible to global access to the medicine by 2010. He said, "It is the aspiration that anybody with HIV should have access to treatment and care and prevention services should be delivered everywhere they’re needed," adding that, "It’s a logical continuation of 3 by 5. There’s no break."
The director said that the emphasis is on treatment rather than giving attention to prevent the epidemic.
Researchers in the US, however, said they think they soon may have a pill that people could take to keep them from getting the AIDS virus rather than just controlling the effects as anti-retroviral do. The combo drug has shown such promise at preventing it in monkeys that officials said they would expand early tests in healthy human bodies. It is believed that prevention remains the first-line of defense against the spread of the disease and must not be neglected.
President Bush made a commitment, in 2001, to check the progress of the HIV/AIDS epidemic by implementing his Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. It promised to provide $15 billion over five years, targeting the hardest hit countries in Africa and the Caribbean, including Botswana, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Kenya and Haiti.
The UN agency says it has not done a good job in preventing HIV transmitting from mother-to-child. It says less than 10 percent of pregnant women suffering with HIV received anti-retroviral drugs before or during childbirth and 1800 infants were born with HIV every day. It revealed that more than 570,000 children under the age of 15 die of AIDS every year. Most of them acquired the disease from their mothers.
WHO believes that possibly most of the people who need the treatment would get it by 2010, but for this at least $22 billion a year will be needed by 2008, it said, to fund national HIV prevention treatment and care programs.
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