RIO DE JANEIRO, July 25 (AFP) - AIDS activists called for greater political backing to exploit scientific progress in the battle against the pandemic, at the start of a major international conference Monday.
More than 5,000 researchers and experts are in Rio de Janeiro for the third annual International Aids Society (AIS) congress to examine advances in treatments for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, which has killed millions in the past two decades.
Experts from 114 countries are to present studies focusing on developments in treatments, vaccines and basic science until Wednesday.
Helene Gayle, director of HIV, Tuberculosis and Reproductive Health programmes at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, called the conference "an opportunity to explore state-of-the-art scientific developments".
But she told delegates that scientific progress had to be backed up by greater political action to help the growing number of sufferers.
The goal of achieving universal access to HIV treatment by 2010 was recently endorsed by the Group of Eight industrialised powers at a summit in Gleneagles, Scotland.
Africa has about two thirds of the estimated number of AIDS/HIV sufferers around the world and most of them do not have access to new treatments.
Stephen Lewis, a UN envoy for Africa, questioned the results of the recent G8 summit as he highlighted the plight of AIDS sufferers in the continent.
"First, I would argue that the G8 summit was not a breakthrough; it was in fact a disappointment. I would argue that we got caught up in music, and the spectacle, and the spin and the celebrities, and we applauded before applause was justified," Lewis told the conference.
He said that while the cancellation of multilateral debt for 18 countries -- 14 in Africa -- was a start, Africa still carried the "insurmountable burden" of over 200 billion dollars of debt that crippled the battle against poverty and the pandemic.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, about 60 percent of the estimated 465,000 sufferers get new treatments. But Brazil, the host nation, has been hailed for its aggressive policies to counter AIDS.
More than 150,000 of the 362,364 AIDS victims registered between 1980 and June 2004 are getting new cocktails of drugs to battle the syndrome.
Brazil was chosen for the main AIDS conference of the year because of its efforts to bring free treatment to sufferers and campaigns to prevent the spread of the disease, including giving out large numbers of free condoms.
The Brazilian government has started the widespread production of generic drugs since the start of the 1990s and soon hopes to be self-sufficient in the production of anti-AIDS treatments.
The authorities made an accord this month with the US pharmaceutical giant Abbott to bring down the price of its drug Kaletra which is used in anti-retroviral therapies.
About 23,400 Brazilian sufferers currently get the cocktail and this is expected to rise to 60,000 in the next six years.
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