Drug Access, Asia Threat in Focus at AIDS Summit

Worldwide access to antiretroviral drugs and a looming epidemic in Asia will top the agenda at the upcoming 15th International AIDS Conference, organizers announced today. At least six world leaders and former presidents Bill Clinton and Nelson Mandela have been invited to join the approximately 20,000 delegates expected for the 2004 conference to be held in Bangkok July 11-16.

Despite government pledges of billions of dollars to combat the pandemic, the number of poor with access to lifesaving medications is negligible. The UN says at least 6 million people in developing countries are in urgent need of antiretroviral treatment, but just around 400,000 are receiving the drugs. "The drugs are available, the costs are down, there is enough practical experience to make these programs sustainable," said Gustaaf Wolvaardt, senior adviser to the Bangkok conference and conference director of the 2000 AIDS meeting in Durban, South Africa. "What I would hope is that governments will go back and realize this is something they can do," added Wolvaardt.

The Durban meeting focused on the prohibitive cost of antiretroviral drugs; intense pressure eventually forced pharmaceutical makers to offer cheaper medicines to the developing world.

Conference organizers also plan to focus attention on Asia, home to one-fourth of the world's new HIV infections. The leaders of China and India, the two Asian nations that experts believe could see an "Africa-style" epidemic, were invited to attend but have yet to confirm that they will. "Those two countries have a quarter of the world's population. If you start getting the type of prevalence rates there that you do in Africa, you are talking about huge numbers and a huge challenge," said Wolvaardt.

Asian nations would do well to follow Thailand's example of heavily promoting condoms in the early 1990s when its HIV-infection rates were similar to those in southern Africa, said Wolvaardt. "Fifteen years later and Thailand has 1 million people HIV positive." A same-size country in southern Africa would now have 15 million to 20 million HIV-positive people, he said.

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