Alliance calls on UNAIDS to lead country treatment target aggregation process
04 July 2006
The High Level Meeting on AIDS held in New York last month brought a welcome agreement to meet the global AIDS funding gap of between $20 billion and $23 billion a year, but member states focused almost exclusively on country level targets in the political declaration, with no global treatment targets adopted. The Alliance has now proposed the aggregation of these country targets into a new global target as a clear way to keep the momentum going and to ensure universal access is achieved.
“The Alliance welcomes the commitment to setting ambitious national targets to help achieve universal access to comprehensive prevention, treatment, care and support by 2010. But we still believe that there is a real risk that, without clear and coherent international targets, the commitment to universal access to prevention, treatment and care will stay as rhetoric,” said Alvaro Bermejo, executive director of the International HIV/AIDS Alliance. “We believe that the aggregation of country targets will allow the international community to set global targets for access to HIV prevention, treatment and care later this year. We are calling on UNAIDS to lead that process.”
To do this, national governments will need support in assessing their situation, identifying and setting their targets, and implementing the plans which will allow targets to be met.
“We are currently working to help Alliance national organisations play a role in that process,” said Alvaro, “and are also lobbying international donors to follow through their commitment to universal access, by implementing a global plan of technical and financial assistance.
“This is critically important because without a clear sense of our shared aspirations at the global level there is a risk that donor countries will believe that the goal of universal access isn’t one to which they will need to contribute.”
