World Bank President Mr James Wolfensohn today called for donors to build a war chest to fight AIDS, saying the epidemic threatened to derail decades of economic progress in many impoverished nations.
In a statement released ahead of next week's United Nations conference on HIV/AIDS, Mr Wolfensohn said that a program to combat the disease in developing nations would cost at least$9.2 billion annually, six times current spending levels.
"HIV/AIDS is no longer just a health problem, but a global development problem, threatening toreverse many of the gains made over the last half century", Mr Wolfensohn said.
"AIDS is an international security problem, and as such, it needs a war chest and a rigorous strategy for achieving results."
Over 36 million people live with HIV/AIDS worldwide, 95 per cent of them in developing nations. Almost 22 million people have died from the disease, including 4.3 million children. Last year, 5.3 million people were infected with HIV.
As well as the personal cost of HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS, the disease is wreaking havoc on economic progress in the world's poorest nations.
The World Bank estimates annual economic growth in half the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, the region worst hit, is falling up to 1.5 percentage points as a direct result of AIDS. By 2010, economic output in some of the hardest hit countries could be cut by as much as 8 percentage points.
The need for increased funding comes against a backdrop of falling aid from donor countries over the past decade. And while the costs of drugs to combat the illness have fallen dramatically, to about $500 annually per person from as much as 10,000, those drugs remain out of the reach of most because annual incomes are about $500 in many countries.
The problem is compounded by the fact that many governments spend less than $5 per person on healthcare annually.