Despite pessimistic warnings from critics last week, the World Health Organisation announced yesterday that it is only 60,000 short of its July 2004 target for getting people onto treatment.
“Our milestone for July 2004 was 500,000, we have reached 440,000, which is a 50% increase since Barcelona and only 60,000 short of the milestone,” said Dr Jim Yoong Kim of the World Health Organisation at a meeting to review progress on the 3 x 5 target on the opening day of the Fifteenth International AIDS Conference in Bangkok.
Dr Kim said that WHO had expected the scale up of treatment to escalate slowly at first, but that 56 countries have now asked for assistance in developing national treatment scale-up plans.
He also admitted that cash had been a huge problem in moving forward, but, “the extraordinary generosity of Canada enabled us to move forward.”
On Friday outgoing International AIDS Society, Dr Joep Lange, president criticised WHO for setting the 3 x 5 target, saying that more attention needed to be paid to building health systems and treatment projects from the ground up before going to a larger scale.
Dr Kim responded that “the core business of WHO is disease prevention and building health systems. We think that pushing for 3 x 5 is the way to build up prevention and build health systems.”
He went on: “3 x 5 is the only morally defensible target. I wake up every morning in a cold sweat thinking about what a big target we’ve set and how little time we have, and the only solace is that I know that how people waiting for the drugs must feel too.”