New York Times Editorial: The Wavering War on AIDS

New York Times Editorial: The Wavering War on AIDS
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 13, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/14/opinion/14fri2.html?th&emc=th


The global war on AIDS has racked up enormous successes over the past decade, most notably by providing drugs for millions of infected people in developing countries who would be doomed without this life-prolonging treatment. Now the campaign is faltering.

Donations from the United States and other wealthy countries have leveled off while the number of people infected with H.I.V., the AIDS virus, grows by a million a year. By one informed estimate, only $14 billion will be available of some $27 billion needed this year to fight the disease in the developing world. Fewer than 4 million of the 14 million people infected with the AIDS virus are getting drug treatment — far short of the goal of universal access set by the United States and others.

Donor nations cite the economic crisis and tight budgets as reasons to slow their contributions to the global fight against AIDS. The Obama administration and many donor nations apparently believe that more lives could be saved by fighting other cheaper diseases, such as respiratory illnesses, diarrhea, malaria and measles.

The results of those decisions can be seen in Uganda and other countries where, as Donald G. McNeil Jr. recently reported in The Times, the campaign against AIDS seems to be falling apart.

Although the number of Ugandans receiving drug treatments jumped from fewer than 10,000 a decade ago to nearly 200,000 today, hundreds of thousands more Ugandans need the drugs and likely can’t get them because clinics now routinely turn new patients away.

That is partly because American funds have been frozen and clinics were told to stop enrolling new patients unless the government has a plan to pay for their treatment. It is also because Uganda has badly skewed its own priorities, such as negotiating to buy a squadron of fighter-bombers from Russia for $300 million.

The United States has been a leader in providing financing for the war on AIDS through bilateral programs and a multilateral global fund. Now, instead of a sharp increase in donations, as once planned, the administration proposes only a slight increase in bilateral financing and a modest reduction in its multilateral contribution.

It has shifted its focus to childhood diseases, keeping young mothers alive, and interrupting the transmission of H.I.V. between mother and child. It is pushing countries to improve their medical delivery systems, manage their own AIDS programs and contribute more of their own funds.

Those are good goals. But the AIDS pandemic is still spreading. And the goal of universal access to treatment remains a distant dream.