Lack of funding threatens the future

Lack of funding threatens the future of HIV drug therapy in the developing

Ten years ago, many experts thought you couldn't bring antiretroviral therapy to people with AIDS in poor countries. The drugs cost too much, there weren't enough doctors, the patients wouldn't take the medicines correctly, and the risk of creating a resistant virus was too high.

None of that turned out to be true. About 5.2 million people with HIV infections are on lifesaving treatment in low- and middle-income countries. In sub-Saharan Africa, antiretroviral therapy, much of it paid for by the U.S. government, is resurrecting whole communities.

But the world is facing a potentially more intractable problem: the price of success.

There's barely enough money to pay for people whose treatment is underway and who will need it for a lifetime. There isn't enough to start treatment for about 5 million more who urgently need it.

Those new concerns about costs dominated the 18th International AIDS Conference, which drew 19,300 participants from 193 countries to Vienna last week.

"If I were to characterize the mood here, I would say it was a combination of rage and panic," said Joanne Carter, director of the anti-poverty group Results and a board member of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.