When the G8 meets in
July, countries with high levels of HIV will be looking for
leadership from the world’s richest and most powerful
governments. It is a critical moment for HIV / AIDS as much
as for the wider anti-poverty campaign. It is the best opportunity
to extend the momentum created by WHO towards universal access
to HIV treatment and care by 2010. The ‘3 by 5’
(3 million in treatment by the end of 2005) initiative has
established much of the technical groundwork to scale up access
to treatment, but it is fundamentally hampered by a lack of
resources. The G8 summit is the key political event in 2005
that can scale up the financial resources so urgently needed
to stop AIDS. The G8 has proven it is capable of bold action
– in 2001 in Genoa it launched the Global Fund to Fight
AIDS, TB and Malaria (now providing national resources in
128 countries).
The Stop AIDS Campaign is calling for a
commitment from the G8 to universal access to care and treatment
– an appropriate move to galvanise further action and
support the development of comprehensive healthcare systems.
This commitment will, however, require genuine action to secure
more and better aid levels, debt cancellation and trade justice,
if it is to be more than just another announced target that
isn’t delivered on. The UK Government has already shown
leadership and commitment to treatment scale-up. The Commission
for Africa report recommends that universal access to HIV
treatment should be achieved by 2010, and that Africa’s
social, political and economic interests will require much
greater action on AIDS than we are currently seeing. During
the general election, the Labour Party made a manifesto commitment
to “press for an international agreement on universal
access to AIDS treatment by 2010”. Now re-elected, we
want to encourage that commitment to come to fruition.
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