India and Nigeria find themselves in an ‘AIDS league of shame,‘ that says by 2010, the world will fall far short of its target of providing universal access to HIV treatment.
Action Aid International, in its report titled ‘Tackling political barriers to end AIDS’, said in India, South Africa and Nigeria, the three nations with the highest cases, the lowest number of people have access to treatment drugs.
The U.N. General Assembly decided to work towards universal access to treatment, care, prevention and support, following a declaration by Group of Eight countries the previous year.
Action Aid in its report said that only five million people across the globe would be on AIDS drugs by 2010 at the current pace, which means more than five million would not get access to the drugs.
At present, about two million of the estimated seven million people in need are on AIDS drugs.
In India, where world’s highest cases of the virus are found, provides anti-AIDS drugs to only seven percent of the affected people in need. 5.7 million people in the country are living with HIV, according to UNAIDS.
Whereas, in South Africa, with the second highest number of AIDS cases only 18 percent of people in need of drugs are getting them.
Also Nigeria, where around 3.5 million people are suffering from the disease, just 10 percent have access to adequate treatment.
In Asia countries like Pakistan are able to provide adequate care to only 1.2 percent of people with HIV.
Aditi Sharma, international campaign coordinator for AIDS at ActionAid, said,
In developing countries, HIV/AIDS is a death sentence for those who don’t get treatment. 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 40 million living with HIV and AIDS.
Life is always full of hope. Even though, AIDS is incurable at present, still we must strive to give hope to millions suffering from the disease through adequate treatment and social care.
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