US policy promoting abstinence as a key plank of its AIDS strategy was criticised at a world forum here Monday as experts warned billions of dollars were needed to prevent the virus from raging out of control.
Experts said the struggle to contain the virus was being jeopardised by shortfalls in money to run the huge prevention and treatment operation, and the search for a vaccine.
A small group of demonstrators who stormed the conference centre here daubed fake blood onto posters of key world leaders who they blamed for reneging on promises to put 10 billion dollars every year into a global fund to tackle the crisis.
"The world stands now at a point of the launch of massive scale-up" of prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS, but "it will be extremely expensive", said Richard Feachem, the director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, at the 15th International AIDS Conference.
The United States is by far the largest contributor to the fight against the disease with President George W. Bush having pledged 15 billion dollars over the next five years.
But US professor and legal expert on HIV/AIDS Brook Baker, of the North-eastern University School of Law, told the forum the US' fair share should be double that.
The UN has estimated 20 billion dollars will be needed annually by 2007 because of the growing threat from the epidemic.
Democrat congresswoman Barbara Lee also criticised the White House's focus on abstinence and said it was undermining efforts to curb its spread.
Lee said women's "only hope in preventing HIV infection is the use of the condom."
However, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni told the conference that an abstinence campaign had been successful in sharply cutting HIV rates in his country.
He said Uganda had the lowest condom use in sub-Saharan Africa but HIV prevalence had declined dramatically because of an aggressive government campaign.
"Our approach is gradual. Abstinence, be faithful, but if you can't, use a condom," he said.
The United Nations warned that a general lack of political and financial support for global condom programs was undermining efforts to slow the pandemic.
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