Urgent action is needed to fight Aids

WHO Director General Jong-Wook Lee called on Britain, Japan and Scandinavian nations in particular to donate more money to the organisation's global push against the disease, estimated to be killing 8 000 people a day. "The trend is more money is becoming available, we have to put in more requests and suggestions and pressure to the countries," said Lee, in Brazil for a global health conference. He said "very urgent action and not the business-as-usual approach" was needed. Funding to battle HIV/Aids has increased from $3,2-billion in 2002 to $4,7-billion but is still less than half the yearly total the United Nations has called for to fight the epidemic and provide drugs to treat people infected by HIV. The WHO earlier this month unveiled plans to rush life-saving anti-retroviral (ARV) Aids drugs to three million of the world's poor by 2005 and train 10 000 health workers. Lee said HIV had now infected nearly 40 percent of people in Botswana and half the population would die of Aids unless urgent action was taken. Life expectancy in Mozambique is expected to fall to 27 years due to the disease.