Millions of lives at stake unless G8 acts on AIDS, warns ActionAid

A new report from Action Aid, Tackling political barriers to end AIDS, calls on governments to urgently deliver on their pledge to achieve universal access to HIV prevention, treatment and care by 2010. “In country after country, progress is staggeringly slow and with just three years to go to 2010, the world is in danger of missing the target that gave hope to the 40 million people living with HIV and AIDS,“ said Aditi Sharma, ActionAid’s campaign coordinator. One of the easiest ways to prevent the virus spreading is giving drugs to HIV positive pregnant women - to prevent mother to child transmission. Yet Nigeria provides drugs to less than 1% of such women while India fares little better with 2%.

This week, as part of the Global AIDS Week (20-26 May) activists are expressing their anger about the number of lives lost and calling on G8 leaders and governments to provide access to treatment and tackle the deadly intersection of violence against women and HIV. In 2001, African governments promised to invest 15% of their expenditure on public health systems but most are far from this, with only Botswana achieving this by 2005. Furthermore, the world’s richest countries are refusing to act to fill the $8-10 billion annual AIDS funding gap.

ActionAid is an international anti-poverty agency working in over 40 countries, taking sides with poor people to end poverty and injustice together. For information about the Global AIDS Week (20-26 May) visit: www.globalaidsweek.org