Parades, prayers amidst hopes for AIDS drug plan

At least six million people living with HIV-AIDS need ARV treatment urgently to stay alive and healthy, but only between 3,00,000 and 4,00,000 are getting the costly drugs.

The UN plan aims to get ARV treatment to half the six million people by 2005 end. ‘‘Eight thousand people die every day and we recognise this as a moral imperative to act,’’ Dr Bjorn Melgaard, a WHO official, said in Bangkok.

Estimates released by UNAIDS showed deaths and new cases reached unprecedented levels in 2003 and were set to rise as the epidemic maintains its deadly grip on sub-Saharan Africa and spreads across Eastern Europe and Asia. AIDS will have killed about three million people this year. Five million more will be infected.

More worrying, the disease is spreading faster in the Asia-Pacific region where one million people were infected this year, taking the total to more than seven million. Several countries, including China and India, face epidemics unless effective action is taken.

In Cambodia, the worst AIDS-affected country in Asia, about 3,000 students, activists and dancers in white and red T-shirts paraded through Phnom Penh.

China, long criticised for a slow response to the threat, cranked up the volume of its World AIDS Day campaign this year. ‘‘Red Ribbon’’, a 20-part drama about a woman diagnosed with HIV after a blood transfusion, will debut on Chinese state TV this week. The first officially backed TV condom ad has finally aired. And at weekend student parades, a long AIDS ribbon painted Beijing’s consumer core, the Wangfujing shopping arcade, red.

Beijing has promised free anti-retroviral drugs to poor victims and a fresh injection of money. But activists and experts continue to point out local cover-ups of blood bank scandals plaguing entire villages and newspaper stories that play down people’s plight.

Top Communist Party leaders have yet to speak out on AIDS. The government says there are 840,000 people in China with HIV and about 80,000 full-blown cases. Experts estimate the total number at 1 million-1.5 million and say it could easily rocket to 10 million by 2010. ‘‘That’s already a number which is truly worrying everyone,’’ UNAIDS country coordinator Joel Rehnstrom said. ‘‘A lot more needs to be done, both in terms of general awareness as well as targeted interventions for high-risk groups, and then improving the quality of the treatment.’’ (Reuters)