Kofi Annan on AIDS

A report released by the UN last week indicates that 2003 saw three million people die of AIDS worldwide and that five million people were infected with the HIV virus in 2003, bringing the total population of those infected with HIV to over 40 million.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, one out of five are infected with HIV, with the infection rate rising to as much as 40 per cent in some countries. But AIDS is also spreading like wild-fire in countries as far-flung and diverse as India, China, Russia and Indonesia. India alone has over six million infected with HIV.

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And even though AIDS is not yet a huge problem in Bangladesh, experts warn that we must immediately take serious measures to counter the spread of the disease or face an impending public health disaster.

Annan places the blame for our collective inability to combat AIDS squarely on the shoulders of the leaders of the world: "I am not winning the war because I don't think the leaders of the world are engaged enough," he told the BBC, "What is lacking is the political will."

The Secretary General correctly pointed put that the developed world has failed to provide the resources needed to pay for anti-retroviral drugs, to set up prevention and testing programmes and to train doctors and nurses in the third world.

The cost to the developing world of funding an effective global campaign to combat the spread of AIDS -- roughly $15 billion a year -- would be negligible, especially when compared to the costs of the war in Iraq or the war against terrorism. But this is five times the amount that was spent in 2003.

Annan is right. We are fast losing the war against the spread of AIDS and the weapon of mass destruction the world needs to focus on is the HIV virus that kills three million people a year.