Universal Access destined to fall FIVE MILLION lives short UNLESS WE ACT

Global Week of Action -- May 20 -26, 2007

The new AIDS treatment access numbers released by the World Health Organization (WHO) are a grave warning about the state of AIDS treatment scale up. In 2006, treatment access grew by 700,000 to an estimated total of 2,015,000 people, leaving many millions more in urgent need of antiretroviral therapy. At this rate of expansion the world will fall five million people short of the internationally declared and reaffirmed Universal Access target of 9.8 million on treatment by 2010.

We all have to take action

• to speed up delivery of AIDS treatment to the millions who will die without access to these life saving drugs.
• to insist pharmaceutical companies cease threatening countries trying to provide affordable and sustainable treatment to their citizens
• to demand governments keep their promises to provide adequate funding and develop ambitious national plans for AIDS treatment access

There is a Global Week of Action May 20 - 26. The leaders of the richest countries in the world meet at the G8 Summit June 6 - 8.

We have to use these opportunities to put the global response to AIDS at the top of the international agenda. Each of us needs to do something to raise the profile of AIDS treatment access. This Action Alert spells out why universal access goals are in peril, what we are demanding, what ITPC has done already, and what we all need to do now.

To read more about what you can do, click here.

Why universal access goals are in peril

Access to AIDS treatment has expanded over the last three years but at a rate that means millions of people will die for lack of access to lifesaving care. There are many disturbing signs that the momentum of the “3 by 5” Campaign has been lost and the AIDS treatment scale up effort is stagnating:

• Only 35 of over 100 countries have developed costed national plans for key HIV/AIDS interventions. In addition, although countries committed themselves to setting targets by the end of 2006, many targets are still awaiting formal endorsement by national authorities.
• WHO – the lead United Nations agency on AIDS treatment - is not sufficiently funded to maintain a strong focus on AIDS treatment scale-up.
• The G8 countries have not adequately honored their 2005 Gleneagles commitments to universal access to treatment, prevention and care.
• Some AIDS policy makers and advocates are pitting treatment and prevention against each other, failing to recognize that only a comprehensive response that integrates treatment, prevention and care will reverse the pandemic.

What we are demanding

AIDS activists need to demand that their country governments and international donors and institutions take immediate action to accelerate AIDS treatment delivery, using this effort to build stronger health systems that also provide HIV prevention, TB diagnosis and treatment, and other services.

• All countries must submit their fully-costed universal access plans, including yearly targets and budgets, by June 30, 2007.
• WHO must review the treatment scale-up targets and plans, ensure that they are both ambitious and realistic, and declare a single, unified global target for universal access to treatment by 2010 either as 9.8 million or a number based on cumulative country targets.
• The G8 must deliver a funding plan for their commitment to universal access to AIDS treatment, prevention, and care at their meeting in Germany in June 2007. G8 countries must fill the $8-10 billion annual Global Fund funding gap and ensure full and predictable funding of the Fund.
• Multilateral, bilateral and private funders must ensure that WHO has the resources to fulfill its mission and leadership role on HIV/AIDS.
• Working with its partners, WHO must develop:
  • a robust plan on access to second line drugs
  • a system to gather lessons learned in scale up and rapidly share them to advance program operations
  • improved technical support to countries to ensure Global Fund and other programs work, and
  • a fully operational human resources effort through the “Treat, Train, and Retain” program that shows concrete outcomes in the near future.
• Pharmaceutical companies – including Abbott and Novartis – must stop threatening governments that seek to produce generic drugs in an effort to prevent their citizens from accessing life saving medicines.
• A Universal Access Strategic Planning and Monitoring Group must be set-up as a standing committee of WHO, UNAIDS, the Global Fund, PEPFAR, the G8, PLWHA networks, treatment activists and organizations representing key populations. It should hold its first meeting by September 2007.

What we have done already

ITPC has

• held a series of meetings in March 2007 with WHO, UNAIDS and the Global Fund in Geneva. We followed up with letters to WHO Secretary-General Margaret Chan listing our demands (and we welcome her initial response) and subsequently to UNAIDS.
• written to the G8 countries listing our demands.
• protested the unconscionable actions of Abbott and Novartis who have sought to intimidate countries like Thailand that plan to produce generic AIDS medicines.