AIDS fatigueA

AIDS fatigue

The bi-annual International AIDS Conference is being held in Vienna later this month and will be attended by former United States president Bill Clinton.

Mr Bowtell will also be one of thousands attending.

"I don't think we will be hearing very much about a magic bullet solution but we will be hearing a lot about the need to resource the response effectively," he said.

"We have AIDS fatigue. It has been part of our lives for 30 years and I expect what we will hear at Vienna from President Clinton and others is the need to fund the global fund.

"In the last eight years $20 billion has been put behind the global fund and we are starting to see results on the ground."

Mr Bowtell says HIV can eradicated if world governments allocate enough funding.

"We will hear that there is some hope that there is a way ahead and that we can get on top of this," he said.

"Not by a magic bullet but by doing more of what we do by removing stigma and discrimination.

"If we steady the course and we keep going and get resourced, then we can start to get on top of this great problem."

Mr Bowtell says millions of people died of AIDS or were newly infected with HIV last year, including on Australia's doorstep.

"Papua New Guinea now has rates of infection among young people there of two and three per cent, and this is dramatically too high," he said.

"It's emerged over the last five and 10 years and really the government of Papua New Guinea, in conjunction with the global fund with Australia and with other donors, has really got to up the effort to prevent the spread of HIV in that country."