GUARDIAN


Despite huge investments, AIDS spreads

By Akin Jimoh, Science Reporter

TWENTY years into the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and the
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) epidemic, fatigue may have
set in as spending to control the spread of the virus continued to
slide.

Although developed countries are spending about $350 million to fight
the epidemic, "it is alarming that AIDS is expanding three times
faster than the funding to control it," the Executive Director of the
United Nations Joint Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS), Peter Piot, said in
a statement.

The ensuing crisis may be more intense in Nigeria and other African
countries, experts have said. In fact, hundreds of demonstrators had
on Wednesday in Washington, United States, rallied to protest
policies which they said protect drug companies but make AIDS drugs
too expensive for people in Africa. About 22.5 million people in the
continent are infected with HIV or down with AIDS. Between 2.5 to 4.5
million Nigerians are currently infected with HIV.

Piot warned that "weighed against the global catastrophe of the AIDS
epidemic, the level of spending for HIV prevention around the world
is minimal".

Between 1990 and 1997, the number of people infected with the virus
that causes AIDS tripled from 9.8 million to 30.3 million, a study
just released by the UN said. During this period, funding for HIV and
AIDS prevention grew from $165 million to $273 million.

This year, about 47 million people are estimated to have HIV - almost
five times as many as in 1990 - but the $350 million spent to control
it is only slightly more than double the 1990 funding level, the
report by UNAIDS and researchers from Harvard University, United
States, said.

Piot noted that "donor nations must realise that their substantial
investments towards improving conditions in developing nations will
be effectively obliterated unless more is invested in fighting AIDS -
the single greatest threat to global development today".

The Washington protest in favour of legislation sponsored by
Representative Jesse Jackson Jr., an Illinois Democrat, was aimed at
forbidding the Clinton Administration from retaliating against any
African trade provisions to obtain cheaper AIDS drugs. The
administration had been criticised for pressuring developing
countries on behalf of drug companies to abandon trade approaches
that could help them obtain cheaper medications.


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