WASHINGTON, Dec 1 (AFP) - The United Nations on Monday asked for help in an ambitious scheme to bring medication to three million poor HIV patients by 2005, as developing nations sought to reduce the stigma of the disease on World AIDS Day.
In Geneva, the World Health Organization and UNAIDS pleaded for assistance with the so-called "three by five" initiative, expected to cost about 5.5 billion dollars.
Even if it is achieved, the plan would still only aid about half of the people with HIV who are poor and in need.
WHO Director General Jong-wook Lee said the pandemic was perhaps "the toughest health assignment the world has ever faced."
"The lives of millions of people are at stake. This strategy demands massive and unconventional efforts to make sure they stay alive."
The plan got a boost when international medical charity Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF - Doctors without Borders), announced in Nairobi that an Indian drug manufacturer had slashed by half the cost of one of the most effective treatments used to fight AIDS.
Drugmaker Cipla will offer Triomune, which combines three generic medications in one pill taken twice a day, for 140 dollars per patient per year -- or half the current price, MSF spokesman Weger Wentholt told AFP.
Antiretroviral drugs prevent the onset of full-blown AIDS in people infected with HIV and make such infections manageable.
For lack of such drugs, three million people died in 2003.
The equivalent patented drugs -- only available in three separate pills -- cost about 700 dollars per patient per year.
Unlike earlier price-reduction deals, the latest offer is not restricted to specific countries. MSF said hundreds of thousands of people will benefit in the short term and will do much to help the "3-by-5" program.
Activists in the United States called on President George W. Bush to live up to his promise to spend 15 billion dollars fighting the disease over five years.
Scores of religious leaders wrote an open letter to Bush and Treasury Secretary John Snow, calling on the government to deliver the money promised under the scheme and to offer great debt relief for countries hardest-hit by AIDS.
The proposal, made by Bush in his annual address to Congress in January, called for three billion dollars to be spent in the first year.
But in his budget request, Bush only asked for two billion dollars, although Congress last week bumped up the figure to 2.4 billion dollars.
Meanwhile, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao staged a meeting, reputedly the first of its kind at this top level, with AIDS patients.
"Premier Wen talked with three patients that were representing other AIDS patients," a spokesman at Ditan Infectious Diseases Hospital in Beijing told AFP.
"He shook hands with them and made some inquiries about their lives and their families and he encouraged them to be brave and fight the disease."
His visit came less than one week after WHO and UNAIDS singled out China as among the next big targets in the fast-spreading pandemic.
The two UN agencies last week named China, India, Russia and Indonesia as major countries that could follow African nations, home to three-quarters of HIV/AIDS victims, down the path to disaster.
The agencies estimated that by the end of this year, 40 million people will be living with AIDS or the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes it.
Three million people will have died this year -- the equivalent to a fully-laden jumbo jet crashing roughly every 90 minutes -- and five million others will have become infected.
Their report warned that official indifference, denial, social taboo and discrimination enabled HIV to leap out of "risk" groups such as prostitutes and intravenous drug users and enter the population mainstream.
In India, where the government on Sunday unveiled a programme to provide free HIV medication to some of its 4.58 million people with the disease, the stars of Bollywood joined World AIDS Day to promote safer sex and open talk about AIDS.
"We have to educate people to fight it and prevent its menace. We cannot be proud of the fact that India is the second largest country suffering from AIDS," said popular Hindi-language star Fardeen Khan.
In Pakistan, where the infection rate is low but risks are high, doctors and health workers held a candlelit vigil and parades in the port city of Karachi.
Pakistani and New Zealand cricketers vowed to wear red ribbons during a one-day international match in Lahore to show support for people with HIV/AIDS.
Saudi Arabia, which traditionally shuns open discussion of the disease, acknowledged that it had 6,787 cases of HIV or AIDS -- nearly five times higher than the last time the tally was reported, in August 2002. Nearly four-fifths are foreigners.
South Africa, the country worst hit by AIDS, marked World AIDS Day with the culmination of its biggest-ever awareness drive and events with top personalities, including Nobel laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu, UNAIDS chief Peter Piot and Irish rocker Bono.
About 5.3 million South Africans out of a population of 44.8 million are infected with HIV or AIDS, more than any other country in the world.
But a combative, conservative tone was struck by the Vatican, which called on governments to reject anti-HIV campaigns "that encourage immoral hedonistic lifestyles and behaviour and help spread AIDS."
Chastity remains the best protection against HIV, the Holy See's health minister, Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, said.
Canada saw a 12 percent rise in the number of AIDS/HIV sufferers in 2002 the health ministry said Monday.
Health Canada said there were 56,000 recorded HIV carriers in the country at the end of last year.
"The epidemic in Canada is serious and continues to grow in scope and complexity despite the availability of information, services and resources that are lacking in many other parts of the world," the health ministry warned.
Health Minister Anne McLellan estimated there were about 17,000 people who do not know they are carrying the virus.
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