Developing countries may need up to $700 Billion for AIDS

At this month's replenishment round for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, donor nations pledged $11.7 billion over three years - an amount several billion dollars below what many had called a bare minimum.

Underscoring the need for lon term planning, the Managing Director of the Results for Development Institute, Dr Robert Hecht said, "This epidemic is not a short-term phenomenon. We`ve been battling with the virus and with the epidemic now for almost three decades. And we still have a long way to go. It`s important now that we move out of the short-term emergency mode and mentality and look long term."

"Even while we act in the short-term, we need to see where this epidemic is going," Hecht said who is also the lead author of the Lancet article.

Five million people are currently receiving anti- retroviral therapy. But it's estimated at least 10 million people should be receiving the life-saving drugs.

"Actions we take today to prevent new infections - and this is where we need to do a great deal more than we are right now - will have huge consequences for what happens 5 to 15, 20 years ahead of us," he said.

The Lancet article estimates the cost for developing countries to fight HIV/AIDS will range from $397 billion to $722 billion. Hecht says it all depends on the choices developing countries make now.

"Countries do have distinct choices. They can do much better to target and use their dollars for prevention. They can avoid people becoming infected at a higher rate if they do the right things. And this has big savings down the road when it comes to treatment and caring for orphans," he said. He warns if funding and treatment efforts level off in the coming years, the number of new HIV infections could rise to more than 3-million annually by 2015.

"Even if we expand the prevention services that we have today, the things that are in our prevention toolkit, we will still be seeing more than a million people becoming infected 20 years from now. We still will not have completely stopped AIDS in its tracks," he said.