AIDS Conference Ends With Appeals

Members of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), an HIV/AIDS organisation, participate in a protest march in Cape Town, South Africa, Sunday, April 23, 2006. Health experts gathered Sunday for an international AIDS prevention conference focussing on microbicides, a potentially powerful weapon in the fight against the virus. (AP Photo/Obed Zilwa) (Obed Zilwa - AP)

CAPE TOWN, South Africa -- An international AIDS conference ended Wednesday with impassioned appeals to political and pharmaceutical industry leaders to fund development of a virus-killing gel to protect women from the disease and so save millions of lives.

Peter Piot, head of UNAIDS, said he was deeply disappointed that research into microbicides _ or vaginal gels _ was so slow.

"I don't know of any other technology which would make such a difference to this pandemic as microbicides," he said in a message to 1,000 scientists and researchers at the conference.

He said safe and effective microbicides could be ready in 5-7 years, with only minimal additional funding, and thus turn the dream of saving millions of lives into reality.

Nearly 40 million people worldwide are infected with the AIDS virus, 25 million of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Last year alone, there were an estimated 6 million new infections. In the hard hit African countries women account for nearly 60 percent of infections. Most are infected through heterosexual intercourse.

"Life expectancy in some of the countries we are coming from is half of what it was 15 years ago," said World Health Organization assistant director-general Joy Phumaphi.

"Our children will not forget our failures because they are not only paying for them now, they will continue to pay for them for many generations," said Phumaphi, a former health minister from Botswana, where nearly 37 percent of the adult population has the virus.

UNAIDS and the World Health Organization have long promoted microbicides as a potentially valuable weapon in the fight against the epidemic, not least because it allows women to protect themselves without having to rely on partners who refuse to wear a condoms or be faithful.

Yet despite this, research has proceeded slowly.

In a video message to the conference, Piot said he was "deeply disappointed" at the slow progress, partly because of lack of funding. He said investment in microbicide development should be doubled _ and even then it would still only reach about US$150 million (euro121 million) per year.

"Given that investment in the AIDS response has risen to billions annually, this surely should be possible," he said.

Microbicides can take the form of a gel, cream, sponge or ring that releases an ingredient that can kill or deactivate HIV during intercourse.