Only slow progress was made on HIV/AIDS treatment in developing countries that were in dire need for related access, the World Health Organization said here on Tuesday.

"The progress was slow, far slower than we'd like, far slower than we have expected," Jim Kim, Director of the HIV/AIDS for the World Health Organization (WHO), said at a press conference of theXV International AIDS Conference being held here from Sunday to Friday.

An estimated 5-6 million people in low- and middle-income countries will die in the next two years if they don't receive antiretroviral (ARV) treatment, the most powerful way to maintain AIDS patients' life.

High cost of drugs were believed to be the main obstacle to scale up HIV/AIDS treatment in the developing countries.

Due to generic competition and the practice of differential pricing by pharmaceutical companies, drug prices have dramaticallyfallen down from some 10,000-12,000 US dollars to as cheap as 300 dollars for one patient per year.

Still, there are only 400,000 or 7 percent of these countries' AIDS patients have access to the treatment at the end of last year,according to the annual report issued by UNAIDS in July.

Moreover, price hike for ARV drugs was possible while large pharmaceutical companies were supporting governments to include strict patent clause in bilateral free trade agreement, which would threaten the production and selling of generic drugs, warnedthe Medecins Sans Frontiers.

Apart from the cost of treatment, the developing countries werealso in great need of facilities, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, lab technicians and community health workers.

"If we wait until all the facilities done as in the US and the western Europe, many people must have died," said Kim.

He went further to say that developing countries have to be "learning by doing" in HIV/AIDS treatment so as to save more people.

While relying on low-price generic drugs, these countries have to scale up their training for medical staff, improving facilitiesand building up community network etc.

In a bid to cut down HIV/AIDS mortality rates in developing countries, the WHO and UNAIDS have launched an initiative named "3by 5 target", which vowed to provide treatment to 3 million AIDS patients by the end of 2005.

So far 56 countries have officially taken part in the initiative, but there will be 6 million people in need of ARV treatment by the time of 2005, the UNAIDS deputy executive director Kathleen Cravero said earlier.

Sourcve: Xinhua