Boost HIV fight

Invest money now to stem disease later

For decades, resignation reigned in the fight against AIDS.

Insufficient investments enabled the disease to grow into a global pandemic that has already caused more than 20 million deaths. Early failures in controlling the disease made it hard to encourage new investments. It was a negative circle that brought us to where we are today: three million people dying every year, leaving millions of orphans behind, untold suffering, and enormous losses in economic and social development.

During the past seven years, the world has begun to turn this cycle around. A tenfold growth in investments against AIDS since 2000 has begun to yield results. In some regions, infection rates are on the decline. Through The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), well over two million people are receiving AIDS treatment. That is only a quarter of all those who need it, but growing access to such treatment is turning HIV from a certain death sentence into a chronic disease.

There has been a decline in new HIV infections due to prevention programs over the past seven years. Programs to change behaviors by increasing condom use, decreasing sexual partners and educating young populations about HIV also show promising trends.

That is the good news. But we have only begun, and unless we keep increasing our investments, the AIDS pandemic will overwhelm our best efforts. Failure to act today will leave the next generation with a deadly and impossible burden.

Our challenge is to stem the growth in new HIV infections. Unless we succeed in this, we may have 100 million people infected with HIV sometime after 2020. Both from a humanitarian and an economic point of view, failure to act now is inexcusable.

AIDS destroys individuals, families, communities, regions and, ultimately, entire economies. If the working populations of large parts of the developing world are ravaged by this pandemic, losses in productivity will threaten global economic security.

Funds available to combat HIV/AIDS must be invested, not just distributed. Fighting HIV/AIDS is a business problem that demands businesslike solutions with measurable targets and results-based funding. As with any investment, we cannot expect immediate returns. We can never eradicate HIV/AIDS, but we can eventually control it. We owe our children to do what it takes to succeed.

Today is World AIDS Day. Rajat Gupta is the board chair of the The Global Fund. Kofi Annan, former secretary-general of the United Nations, is fund replenishment chair.