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New figures show HIV/AIDS fight under-resourced - UNAIDS/WHO
UNAIDS/WHO Press Release. 10 October 2002.
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On the eve of the Board meeting of the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World Health Organization (WHO) released updated figures on the cost of mounting the global response to HIV/AIDS.
Revised estimates to 2005 for prevention, care and support programmes in low- and middle-income countries indicate that US$ 10.5 billion will be needed by 2005. These take into account both declines in the price of anti-retroviral drugs and the inclusion of three additional interventions (universal precautions to prevent HIV transmission in health care settings, post-exposure prophylaxis for health care workers, and safe needles for all medical injections including immunization campaigns), to the 22 included in the original estimates.
The estimates, prepared by a working group of the UNAIDS Economics Reference Group, reflect a revision of earlier figures published in Science magazine in June 2001.
The revised estimates reinforce the call by the Secretary-General of the United Nations to rapidly scale up spending on AIDS to some US$10 billion a year on HIV/AIDS by 2005.
The new estimates also project that financial resource needs will continue to increase significantly and that by 2007 some US$ 15 billion a year will be required to successfully combat HIV/AIDS. The updated estimates are comparable to what the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health (CMH) identified would be needed by 2007 for HIV/AIDS specific resources to fight the epidemic.
The CMH also estimated that beyond the resources required to support the HIV/AIDS specific interventions, additional resources will be required for health sector infrastructure development in the poorest countries. The UNAIDS Economics Reference Group estimates do not include costs for increasing physical infrastructure, but rather are based on increasing coverage of HIV/AIDS interventions within existing infrastructure capacities.
According to UNAIDS and WHO, substantial increases in expenditures from all quarters - governments, bilateral and multilateral agencies, non-governmental organizations and the private sector - will be urgently required to keep pace with the epidemic's rapid expansion, financial need and programme capacity.
The latest UNAIDS estimates also indicate that to meet the US $6.5 billion in urgent needs identified to fight the epidemic in 2003, funding from all sources will have to double from 2002 levels. For 2002, UNAIDS projects that spending will approach or exceed $3 billion.
At its Board meeting, which begins in Geneva today, the Global Fund is expected to discuss its fundraising targets for 2003-2007. |
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