Only one per cent of the millions of Africans who need anti-AIDS drugs receive them, said a report released today.
The report came a day after a UNAIDS expert called the crisis "the grotesque obscenity of the modern world".
The report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) urged developing countries to make AIDS drugs affordable by manufacturing their own anti-retroviral (ARVs) generics - cheap copies - or passing laws to make it possible for them to be imported.
"It is still a big challenge for countries to be involved in accessing anti-retrovirals and at low cost and quality," Sophie-Marie Scouflaire, a lead author of the report, told a news conference in Kenya at the International Conference on AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections in Africa (ICASA).
"It is possible to access treatment for less than one dollar a day...if there is a strong policy within the country," she added.
MSF said the average cost of the cheapest generic anti-retroviral is around $300 per year. In most African countries, more than half the population lives on less than a dollar a day.
About 7,000 people are on ARV treatment in Kenya, 3,000 of whom buy the drugs for themselves. The rest get free treatment from organisations like MSF and charities.
According to estimates from the United Nations AIDS group, 38.6 million adults were living with HIV/AIDS all over the world at the end of 2002, of whom an estimated 29.4 million were in sub-Saharan Africa.
In some nations the average life expectancy has fallen to 35 years because of AIDS, and an estimated 11 million children have lost one or both parents to the disease.
The charity Save the Children said in a statement that by 2010 there would be 40 million orphans of AIDS and other diseases aged below 15 in the sub-Saharan region.
The WHO/MSF report found only 50,000 out of an estimated 4.1 million people urgently in need of ARVs in sub-Saharan Africa are on the drugs that reduce the level of the virus in the body and prolong life.