UNITED NATIONS, June 2 (UPI) -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warns while there has been significant but insufficient progress against AIDS and its spread is accelerating.
He told a high-level review at U.N. World Headquarters in New York Thursday the epidemic is accelerating on every continent and called for more money and leadership to halt its spread.
Annan said response to goals adopted at a 2001 special General Assembly session on HIV/AIDS calling for rapid expansion of HIV prevention, care, treatment and impact alleviation by 2005, "has succeeded in some of the particulars, but it has not matched the epidemic in scale."
"It is clear that the epidemic continues to outrun our efforts to contain it," Annan said, adding, "We know it's possible to break the cycle of infections," and cited successes in Brazil, Cambodia and Thailand.
He said only 12 percent of people in need of antiretroviral therapies in low and middle-income countries were receiving them.
